The GCC states have two mostly separate labor markets, one for citizens and the other for non-citizens. Pay scales and working conditions in the citizen labor market are almost invariably better than pay and conditions in the non-citizen labor market for workers with similar skills. The creation of a privileged labor market for citizens requires state intervention in labor markets, and this occurs largely through the provision of state jobs to citizens. In the richer Gulf states (Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait) citizens who are employed are employed almost exclusively by the state or state-owned-enterprises. Most figures suggest that only around 10% of citizen employees are employed by private sector firms. Non-citizen migrants, by contrast, overwhelmingly work in the private sector. This bifurcation of the job market is widely seen as a serious problem in Gulf societies, and Gulf states have adopted policies intended to lure (or compel) citizens to take up employment in the private sector. These efforts have met with limited success. Discussion of these policies in the literature tend to examine the policies from the point of view of economic rationality, and proposed solutions to the problem tend to be cast in terms of their economic logic. The bifurcation of Gulf labor markets, however, is first and foremost a political problem, and it is politics that determines the success or failure of any particular policy that aims to move citizens into the private sector labor market. In this paper I propose to present at the upcoming 2011 Middle East Studies Association conference, I will examine the policies that have resulted in the bifurcated labor market in the region, and the policies that have been proposed to lessen the effects of this bifurcation. In examining these policies, I will focus on the political motivations behind the adoption of the policies, the distributional consequences of these policies for different groups in society, and the corresponding likelihood that these policies will succeed in light of political realities in the Gulf states today.