New Publication: Lebanon within the Gulf Migration System: Peripheral Incorporationand the Limits of Labor Migration Governance Alignment

The third issue of GSGP’s Gulf Horizons series has been published Ibn Haldun University’s Center for Gulf Studies and Global Policy (GSGP) presented the third issue of its Gulf Horizons series to readers on 21 October 2026 under the IHÜ Publications imprint. The study, entitled ‘Lebanon within the Gulf Migration System: Peripheral Incorporation and the Limits of Labour Migration Governance Alignment’ and authored by Karina Goulordava, a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Koç University, examines Lebanon as a country situated on the periphery of the Gulf-centred regional migration system.Goulordava recalls how, following the oil boom of the 1970s, the Gulf states transformed into one of the world’s largest migration hubs. Lebanon, too, began recruiting workers from Asia and Africa during the years of the civil war and adopted the kafala system – an employer-dependent sponsorship model similar to that in the Gulf. According to the study, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have implemented significant reforms to this system in recent years. Chief among these are allowing workers to change jobs without their employer’s permission and the removal of the exit permit requirement. Lebanon’s migration governance, however, has remained largely unchanged. The author attributes this to the country’s sectarian political system, its economic structure reliant on cheap foreign labour, and its weak institutional capacity.He does not expect the Gulf reforms to bring about an automatic transformation in Lebanon. Nevertheless, she argues that these reforms offer transferable principles, such as the separation of workers’ legal status from that of their employers. The study concludes with the suggestion that migration debates should move beyond the Western-centred model of citizenship and shift towards a framework centred on ‘the rights of non-citizens’.