The author wishes to thank the Oxford-Sciences Po Research Group, the Sciences Po Alumni UK Charity Trust, the Department of Politics and International Relations (Oxford University), and Neil Martin for his careful reading.

1. By Middle East, we mean Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Palestinian territory, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, excluding North African Arab states, Iran, and Turkey.

2. Heba Nassar and Ahmed Ghoneim, “Trade and Migration, Are They Complements or Substitutes: A Review of Four MENA Countries,” (Economic research forum, Working Paper 0207, 2002).

3. Andrzej Kapiszewski, “Arab Versus Asian Migrant Workers in the GCC Countries,” UN Expert Group Meeting on International Migration and Development in the Arab Region, Population Division Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Secretariat Beirut, (May 15–17, 2006).

4. Having started exploiting oil in the 1970s, by 1983, Libya's Secretariat of Planning estimated that half of Libya's population was constituted of foreigners, mainly Egyptians and Asians. See Nassar and Ghoneim, “Trade and Migration,” 9.

5. Sharon Stanton Russell and Michael Teitelbaum, “International Migration and International Trade” (World Bank discussion paper no. 160, 1992).

6. Source: National Statistical Units and Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, Trends in Total Migrant Stock: The 2005 Revision <http://esa.un.org/migration>.

7. Data concern refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The numbers are a matter of controversy between institutional sources, but according to the UNRWA definition of a refugee, Palestinian refugees registered with the UN numbered approximately 711,000 in 1950 and over four and a half million in 2009.

8. World Refugee Report 2009, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (June 2009).

9. The debate covers the effects of remittances at the global level and within the region itself. See for instance Keely, Charles and Tran, Bao Nga, “Remittances from Labor Migration: Evaluation, Performance and Implication,” International Migration Review, 23 (1989): 500–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11. See contribution by Fargues, Philippe, Generations Arabes, l'alchimie du nombre (Paris, 2000)Google Scholar and The Middle East Journal special issue in 2010 and research program at Georgetown School of Foreign Service, Doha, Qatar.

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24. Choucri, Nazli, “Asians in the Arab World: Labor Migration and Public Policy,” Middle Eastern Studies 22 (1986): 252–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. At the domestic level in receiving countries, the change in the origin of migrant labor during the 1980s reflected political pressures and the fall in state revenues. Asian wages were lower, and the gain in labor costs could help absorb part of the decline of oil revenue. A diversified Asian workforce was also more likely to meet the demand for both highly and poorly skilled labor. But Asian workers were also considered less likely to settle in the Gulf, a trait that perfectly fit the agenda of many Gulf policy makers who had started to regard migration as a threat to regime stability, state formation, and national security.

26. Choucri, Nazli, “Asians in the Arab World: Labor Migration and Public Policy,” Middle Eastern Studies 22 (1986): 252–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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29. Recently, part of the Saudi business community has been trying to open the borders of the country once again to Thai domestic workers as the cost of Indonesian domestic workers has risen dramatically over the past few months due to an increase in the fare and commissions of Indonesian recruiting agents. See Arab News, June 19, 2010.

30. During the Gulf crisis, between August 1990 and January 1991, 839,000 Egyptians were forced to leave Iraq and Kuwait. Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, quoted by Kharoufi, Mostafa, “La crise du Golfe, une aubaine pour l’Égypte?” in Crise du Golfe et ordre politique au Moyen-Orient (Quatrième rencontres franco-égyptiennes de Politologie, Aix en Provence 23-24-25 janvier 1992, Paris: CNRS éditions, 1993), 289–301Google Scholar.

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40. Zaki al-Arsuzi, Ba'th al-ummah al-’Arabiyah wa-risalatuha ila al-’alam: al-lisa'n al-’Arabi [The Renaissance of the Arab Community and its Message to the World: The Arabic Language] (Damascus, 19–).

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55. N. Choucri, “The New Migration in the Middle East,” 425.

56. CARIM annual report, 2006.

57. Elena Ambrosetti and Giovanna Tattolo, “Petrole immigration de travail vers les pays du Golfe,” Paper presented at the 13th AIDELF Conference, Budapest, September 2004.

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62. Sishagne, Shumet, “The Genesis of the Differences in the Eritrean Secessionist Movement (1960–1970),” in Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Vol. 1, University of Addis Abäba 1984, ed. Beyene, Taddese (Addis Abäba, 1988)Google Scholar.

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65. Ali Othman Sabbe, leader of the Eritrean Liberation Front and subsequently of several secessionist movements in the 1980s, wrote extensively to defend this idea that legitimized his Arab diplomacy in favor of the guerrilla and against Ethiopia. ‘Sabbe, Othmân Sâlih, “Haqîqa al-sirâ’ fî Irtîriyâ” [The truth of the Eritrean struggle], Al-Mujtama’ no. 477 (Kuwait, 1980)Google Scholar; ‘Sabbe, Othmân Sâlih, History of Eritrea (Beirut, 1974)Google Scholar.

66. Interviews carried out by the author in Saudi Arabia between January and March 2006 with senior members of the Eritrean community in Riyadh and Jeddah.

67. In order to understand the political context surrounding the circulation of Eritreans, we explored the archives of the Sudanese central administration managing refugee issues, the Sudanese Commissioner of Refugee. We traced back administrative practices around entry, exit and circulation of CTD holders in the oil rich countries and confronted those with a series of interviews of former Eritrean migrants refugees in Saudi Arabia in January and February 2006.

68. al-Arsuzi, Zaki, Al-jumhuriyah al-muthla (Damascus, 1965)Google Scholar.

69. The Convention was adopted by Egypt and the theme of Arab unity was included in the Syrian Constitution of 1973, the Libyan Constitution of 1969: “The Libyan people are part of the Arab nation. Their goal is total Arab unity.” Article 1 Constitution of the Arab Republic of Libya, 1969.

70. Even states that contain large non-Arab populations like Bahrain (Iranian minority) have adopted the Arab standard. “Bahrain is an Arab Islamic State, independent and fully sovereign, and its people are part of the Arab nation,” Constitution of the State of Bahrain adopted on May 26, 1973.

71. Caplan, Jane and Torpey, John, Documenting Individual Identity (Princeton, 2001)Google Scholar.

72. On this and the historiographical debate around it, see Cliffe, Lionel and Davidson, Basil, The Long Struggle of Eritrea for Independence and Constructive Peace (Trenton, 1988)Google Scholar; Iyob, Ruth, The Eritrean Struggle for Independance: Domination, Resistance and Nationalism 1941–1993 (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar, but also Erlich, Haggai, Ethiopia and the Middle East (Boulder, 1994)Google Scholar.

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74. For an edited version of this narrative, see propaganda volume by Muhammad Sa'id Nawud, Al-’arabiyya wa al-Islam bi-al-qurn al-afriqı [Arabism and Islam in the Horn of Africa], Sd, Sl. and Bakr, Muhammad ‘Othman Abu, Tarıkh Irıtriyya al-mu'asir, Ardan wa sha'aban [History of Eritrea, Land and People] (Cairo, 1994)Google Scholar.

75. Sudan moreover created a national Commissioner of Refugees (COR) in 1967, which was entitled to issue refugee cards and travel documents.

76. “According to article 28 paragraph 1 of the 1951 Convention, Contracting States are required to issue travel documents for the purposes of travel to refugees lawfully staying in their territory.” Note on Travel Documents for Refugees, August 30, 1978, International Protection (SCIP) EC/SCP/10 <www.unhcr.org>.

77. “(c) Geographical validity of Convention Travel Documents. Art. 17. According to paragraph 4 of the Schedule to the 1951 Convention, the document shall, save in special or exceptional cases, be made valid for the largest possible number of countries. States do not normally restrict the document's geographical validity. Some States, however, for security reasons, exclude from such validity the refugee's country of origin.” Ibid.

78. Nobel, Peter, “Refugee Law in the Sudan with the Refugee Conventions and the Regulation of Asylum Act of 1974,” Research Report no. 64, (Uppsala, 1982)Google Scholar.