The Role of Colonial Knowledge in Building the Arab Gulf’s Migration Regime

Abstract In this paper, I examine how the British Empire in the Arab Gulf created colonial classifications between Gulf Arabs and South Asians. The British racialised the Gulf Arabs in a way which presented them as an eternal, homogeneous, and ‘pure’ group. This racialisation contributed to the exclusion of others within the Gulf, most notably South Asian migrants. Firstly, I discuss some of the gaps within the literature which include the erasure of race and colonialism. Then, I identify how these gaps can be remedied using a Decolonial framework. Based on these theoretical foundations, I interrogate the racialisations of Gulf Arabs and how these racialisations influenced the migration regime in the Gulf. Lastly, I examine how South Asians were racialised in the Gulf. I conclude that the exclusionary migration regime in the Arab Gulf is built on the foundations of the racialised colonial classifications of the British Empire.