International labour migration to the GCC countries has primarily been understood through conventional economics, involving supply and demand in the labour market based on the maximization of returns to labour or business (Serageldin 1983). There has also been anthropologically minded-work seeing labour migration in terms of the subjective experiences of migrants, family-ties, gender issues, social networks and the like (Longva 1996). This paper, by contrast, based on fieldwork in the UAE and Kuwait, interviews with key officials, contractors, members of relevant NGOs, and migrant workers, and extensive secondary and primary research in Arabic and English, sets out to probe how far migratory labour regimes in the Gulf can be viewed as political constructions. A circular, non-citizen, menial labour force, segregated into compounds, denied rights and subject to deportation has been a way to de-politicize and control an ever-expanding working population, especially after the resistance of national workers to racial hierarchies by the 1960s (Vitalis 2007). Attempts to control labour also help account for the changing composition of the foreign workforce: the shift from increasingly resistant Arab workforces toward recruitment in Asia from the 1970s, including mass expulsions of Palestinians and Yemenis from Gulf countries in 1990-2; and, in the 2000s, responding to protests among South Asian workers, authorities in the United Arab Emirates attempted a strategy of ‘cultural diversity’, involving a turn to Arab workers once again (Shami 1994; Longva 1997; Davis 2006). Movements to ‘nationalize’ Gulf workforces are also driven in part by fears over increasingly assertive foreign labour. Sending countries have political concerns of their own. And migration is also implicated in transnational structures of power. Political exigencies, as this paper sets out to show, and not just the abstract functioning of “the market”, invade the making of the labour regime at every turn. This paper specifically argues for the significance of what Caliskan and Callon have called ‘economization’ – where numerous questions are de-politicized through their displacement into issues of demography, economic development, and technocratic expertise (Caliskan and Callon 2007). Such economization is a political technique aimed at the control of persons through the management of things. But this management often operates through (not against) the identities and essentialist interpellations. Both economization, and ‘culture wars’, therefore, are fundamental in the migration politics explored here.

As Syria slowly opens itself to the global market and private companies offering higher salaries proliferate, ambitious, upwardly-mobile young Syrians scramble to assemble CVs and qualifications that will land them prestigious, well-paid positions. Overwhelmingly, employers responsible for hiring and job-seekers alike identify strong English language skills as the most important factor in obtaining professional work. For a country renowned for its nepotism and corruption, the fact that an objective and quantifiable skill could be the most important factor in attaining high-level employment is striking. Does this insistence on English proficiency represent a new kind of social mobility in Syria? Based on 18 months of dissertation research in Damascus, Syria, this presentation will explore the relationship between the demand for English proficiency in hiring practices and socio-economic class dynamics in contemporary Syria. Drawing on extensive interviews and ethnographic work with human resources professionals, entrepreneurs and a new generation of highly motivated, English-speaking job seekers, the presentation will demonstrate how and why the acquisition of high-level English ability is intricately linked to class membership. However, the relationship between socio-economic status and language skills is hardly straight-forward nor unidirectional. It is true that individuals from wealthier backgrounds had more resources with which to procure costly English education, which most often resulted in fluent English. However, my research found that those who commanded English confidently and employed it successfully in professional situations – despite their varied backgrounds – actually began to coalesce as a new elite whose very group identity was based on their shared excellence in English and their professional success. Given this, the presentation will conclude by considering whether an almost singular focus on English-language skills in Syria employment practices represents the introduction of meritocracy into Syrian business culture and society at large or if it merely serves to solidify and increase polarization in this already hierarchical society.

Turkey’s economic restructuring in the last three decades led to a substantial decrease in the level of labor participation in agriculture, an increased pace of immigration from rural to few major cities, downsizing of the public sector, an substantial increase in the number of low-skilled service jobs and an expansion of private business and wealth. These changes have a significant impact on the composition of cities such as Ankara. The expansion of the city to embrace squatter areas, resided by low-wage and unskilled immigrants and the legalization of these areas in the 1980s blurred the socio-economic and physical boundaries that separated them from the inner city middle and upper class neighbourhoods. The re-demarcation of boundaries is materialized in the exodus of upper classes to suburbs in the 1990s. Unlike the suburbanization that started forty years ago in the United States, the Turkish upper classes not only moved their homes but also their restaurants, cafes, stores and private schools. Bilkent is such a development in Ankara, designed as a self-sufficient city offering a life-style based on convenience, luxury, leisure and fitness to upper class families. Bilkent created not only a new life-space for the rich but also many minimum-wage service jobs for young people. This paper examines these service sector jobs in Bilkent, social characteristics of workers, and what it means to serve to rich people in contemporary Turkey. The paper argues that their jobs create complex emotions in workers. In comparison to their relatives and friends who have hard time finding jobs, given the high unemployment in the current Turkish economy, young service workers feel ‘lucky’ to have regularly paying jobs in the formal sector. Moreover, they consider working at Bilkent as a cultural advantage in terms of 'seeing new things' and interacting with ‘civilized’ people. However, their feeling of advantage is constantly undermined by their interactions with rich customers and residents that remind them what they lack. Their experience of class and sense of worth are further complicated by their perception of social progress and of moral judgments about the customers. By analyzing economic, cultural and emotional dimensions of social hierarchies in Turkey, the paper aims to contribute to the understanding of polarization of urban landscapes and labor markets.