Governance

In this ambitious study, Anna K. Boucher and Justin Gest present a unique analysis of immigration governance across thirty countries. Relying on a database of immigration demographics in the world's most important destinations, they present a novel taxonomy and an analysis of what drives different approaches to immigration policy over space and time. In an era defined by inequality, populism, and fears of international terrorism, they find that governments are converging toward a 'Market Model' that seeks immigrants for short-term labor with fewer outlets to citizenship - an approach that resembles the increasingly contingent nature of labor markets worldwide.

"Capital-rich and labour-poor. This is how the curse of the Gulf States was described fifty years ago. The world’s largest oil stocks had just been discovered under the earth’s most arid and depopulated region. With oil internationally recognised as the property of the state and not of the company that did the pumping, the scarcely populated states of the Gulf acquired enormous wealth. From the largest and oldest (Saudi Arabia) to the tiniest and youngest (Qatar), all six Gulf states soon faced income surpluses with population shortages, to which they all responded by importing labour. In just five decades, the Gulf, which for centuries had received only small population flows, became the world’s third largest receiver of global migrants after the United States and the European Union."

The countries of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEM) and those in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are crucial to the development of the world economy. Highly skilled migration to and from these regions is key to the recent socio-political transformations that have occurred across the world.

The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform investigates the wide variance of occurrence and outcomes of Arab uprisings and the deep historical and structural roots of power imbalances within societies to ask why regime change took place in only four Arab countries and why democratic change proved so elusive in the countries that made attempts.

A Political Economy of the Middle East is the most comprehensive analysis of developments in the political economy of the region over the past several decades, examining the interaction of economic development processes, state systems and policies, and social actors in the Middle East.