With the UN-enforced no-fly zone over Libya in place since Saturday, Western forces have taken greater military action against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces by air and sea. Following the international military intervention, questions like how long attacks will persist and whether Gaddafi will relinquish power naturally arise. As pressing as these current questions are, however, I still find myself thinking back to something that piqued my curiosity when the Libyan civil uprisings first began: Why were there so many Vietnamese in Libya and how did they get there? (Remember: at the start of the uprisings, there were roughly 10,400 Vietnamese living in Libya—a sizable number of people)
The short answer would be that the majority of Vietnamese in Libya were there as migrant workers earning a living abroad. But the migrant worker’s narrative is never a simple one, and while I understand that the Vietnamese community has reaches throughout the world, I don’t typically think of Libya when I think of Vietnamese going abroad. What were the conditions that brought workers out of Vietnam and into Libya specifically?
Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be much scholarship readily available on the internet focusing squarely on Vietnamese-Libyan relations, but what I’ve gleaned from different sources does provide some overview and implications of labor migration patterns to the Middle East in general. Many unanswered questions remain, and this should in no ways be considered conclusive or comprehensive, but here’s what I gathered:
High volumes of Asian labor migration to the Middle East began in the 1970s when oil-producing Middle Eastern countries began taking greater measures towards internal development. Small domestic labor forces, however, necessitated importing labor from abroad. According to the Cambridge Survey of World Migration published in 1995, importing Asian labor over Arab labor in particular had political advantages in a number of Middle Eastern countries:
Asian contractors were reliable, their workers accepted lower wages and they did not require the same social support services as the Arabs, who were more likely to settle and bring their families. But observers agree that political rather than economic considerations were decisive in the shift. Because their own populations were so tiny, the Gulf States were concerned that a further build-up of any single group of foreign nationals could easily result in their native population being outnumbered. Fear of over-dependence on any one group of foreign workers prompted the governments of the Gulf States to opt for a policy of diversifying and rotating supply sources. A related but probably more serious concern, however, was that the uncontrolled inflow of some non-national Arab communities would sooner or later pose a serious risk to the security of existing political order.
Thus, though the majority of foreign workers entering the Middle East initially came primarily from South Asia, East and Southeast Asian workers were also accepted to prevent the over-accumulation of one national group. Many Asian countries actually promoted the emigration of their workers into the Middle East, thereby allowing Middle Eastern countries to import labor selectively and maintain control over migrant demographics. I hesitate to quote too excessively, but again, according to the Cambridge survey:
Asian countries of origin were prepared to get involved directly and indirectly with the recruitment and placement of their workers in foreign countries. In the early 1970s the South Korean and Philippine governments, for example, actively ‘marketed’ their manpower skills abroad and entered into labour supply agreements with other governments and private organizations…Asian governments generally refrained from adopting policies that restricted emigration. Even the socialist states of Vietnam and China adopted policies to promote the employment of their nations abroad, although they maintained strict controls on the exit of individuals.
Why were these other Asian countries so keen on sending their nationals to the Middle East? Remittances, not unexpectedly, play a large part of it. A study for the UN in 2006 suggests that foreign workers in the Middle East send an aggregate 27 billion dollars annually back to their home countries. Also, sending workers abroad increases the chances of securing special contracts for the home country. For instance, in “Asian Labor Migration to the Middle East” (published in 1984, but still with resonances today), Fred Arnold and Nasra Shah point out that South Korean construction companies successfully negotiated $13 billions worth of construction contracts in Libya by 1982, including a $3.3 billion contract to build a waterway, “reportedly the largest civil engineering project undertaken” in Libya at the time. There were also incentives for the individual foreign worker; relocating to Gulf countries (Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) provided greater career advancement opportunities.
I’m not sure if the same can be said for countries like Egypt and Libya, however, where great portions of the indigenous population are impoverished and lack any career opportunities. Thus, it’s still hard for me to fathom how there were so many Vietnamese foreign workers in Libya where the unemployment rate is incredibly high—the CIA put the estimate at about 30% in 2004, and other recent figures put it about 20.7%. I’d venture to say that it’s probably not a matter of willing Vietnamese workers and unwilling Libyan workers, but I could be wrong. I’m also not sure if Libya’s paradigm fits neatly into the same migrational patterns outlined for the Gulf Countries, though some scholarship examines labor migration to the Gulf countries and non-Gulf countries collectively.
How many of the Vietnamese laborers in Libya were there under contract with the Libyan or Vietnamese government? How many were there under contract with private transnational corporations? How different was the Vietnamese migrant worker’s experience from that of the Filipino or Bangladeshi migrant worker? It’s still unclear to me. If you know more of the Vietnamese emigrant narrative to Libya, do tell. Also, feel free to correct me if I’ve misstated anything.
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Studies referenced include the following:
A report by Andrzej Kapiszewski titled “Arab Versus Asian Migrant Workers in the GCC countries” for the UN which can be found here.
Research notes titled “Asian Labor Migration to the Middle East” by Fred Arnold and Nasra M. Shah, published in 1984 in the International Migration Review. If you have access to JSTOR, the notes can be found here.
The Cambridge Survey of World Migration edited by Roger Cohen and published in 1995, especially pages 419 to 424.
Great article–thx for post. Alot of VN govt and World Bank statistics that can paint a picture of the flow of people and materials. Perhaps some VN press articles describing working conditions, but perhaps not in an unfiltered way (govt is incentivized to recruit and send large numbers overseas). I believe that in case of Libya, and even more in the rich Gulf states, that there is something seriously wrong with have masses of your own people unemployed or on welfare, while skilled (Western) and unskilled (Southeast, South Asian) laborers are imported.
I myself cannot understand why there is high unemployement rate in these middle east countries where their majority of their workers are foreigners. Is the indigenous people lazy?…with their govts. pandering them or was it for political reason to keep their own citizens quiet, “contented”