Western Asia · data through 2024
Around nine in ten residents of the United Arab Emirates were born elsewhere, the highest share of any large country.
Twenty five year view
These lines show migrant stock, meaning people living outside their birth country at each point in time. They do not show annual arrivals.
Why people move
Construction, logistics, hospitality, health, and finance are staffed largely by workers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Egypt. Long term residence visas now exist for some professionals, but most stay is tied to employment.
Connections
Common destinations
India, United Kingdom, Canada, Egypt
Common origins
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines, Egypt, Nepal, Sri Lanka
Adapting and finding support
Residency depends on a job, so losing work can mean losing the right to remain within weeks. Families are separated by income thresholds for sponsorship.
Labour dispute channels and home country consulates handle most practical problems.
Use the support guideResearch that explains this pattern
Anthropology
Sending money home is not only economic. It maintains standing, honours obligation, and keeps a person a member of the family they left.
People send money they cannot spare, and stopping carries social cost heavier than the financial one.
Marcel Mauss on the gift, applied in contemporary migration ethnography
Anthropology
Many families are not here or there but genuinely both, with money, decisions, care, and authority moving constantly across the border.
Integration and continued attachment to home rise together rather than trading off.
Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc Szanton
Behavioural economics
Once a family has sold land, borrowed money, or crossed a border, the money and risk already spent make turning back feel unthinkable.
People continue on dangerous routes past the point where they would have chosen them fresh, and debt shapes the years after arrival.
Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer on the sunk cost effect, 1985
Support inside and beyond United Arab Emirates
Contract registration, wage protection, and labour complaint handling.
Workers employed in the country
OpenStandards and information on fair recruitment and decent work.
Contract workers and advocates
OpenAssistance, voluntary return, reintegration, and counter trafficking support through the local office.
Anyone moving, arriving, or returning
OpenThese are public organisations. The project is not affiliated with them and cannot guarantee outcomes. Nothing here is legal advice or an emergency service.
Figures are rounded published estimates. Causes and adaptation differ within every country and should not be read as a verdict about any person.