Some Gulf Countries Maybe "Better" than Others...But Maybe that Matters Little for the Foreign Workers

"You know, all the countries in the Gulf...they are very different!" Almost as soon as the taxi driver heard that I had just flown into Bahrain from Kuwait he began listing out the subtle nuances that distinguish his Arab petrostate from the neighboring ones. "In Kuwait, they have so much money...but the roads are no good," he pointed out as we drove on the smooth highway into the city. I had to agree, even though I had been in the island country for less than an hour. The spiffy international airport and roads in Bahrain were a far cry from the not-so-well-maintained counterparts in Kuwait.

"And the people. Omanis are the nicest, then Bahrainis, the Saudis, eh," the taxi driver shook his head in disgust as soon as he mentioned the Saudis. Clearly, he had a fair share of people troubles traveling in the biggest country of the region. While I was in no position to comment on the niceness of the people, the efficiency difference between Kuwait and Bahrain was stark. In Kuwait, getting a visa on arrival was a scene of pure confusion, with no one to ask questions about unclear instructions. In Bahrain, the work was done in two minutes, with a quick swipe of a credit card. 

But perhaps the biggest difference lies in the fact that I was having this conversation to begin with. The taxi driver was a Bahraini Arab, perhaps in his fifties, wearing the thawb, the traditional overflowing white garment the region's men normally wear. In a country where the vast majority of men work cushy government jobs and retire early on generous pensions, it was a shock seeing a local man driving a taxi for a living. Indeed, in my many taxi rides in equally wealthy Kuwait, I had never encountered any taxi driver who was not from the Indian subcontinent.

That is not to say that the foreign presence in Bahrain is any less than its northern neighbor. If anything, Indians and Filipinos are bigger in numbers, and more curiously, respected as equals. In the center of Manama's historical downtown souq is a warren of small trading, sweets shops, jewelry stores, and restaurants largely run by South Asian owners. So much so that a part of the area is officially known as Little India, centered on a Shri Krishna Temple bustling with a steady flow of worshippers. No equivalent was in the touristy downtown souq in Kuwait.

Is the foreign worker happier in Bahrain than in Kuwait, then? Not really, as the visual inclusivity seemed to not have brought shared prosperity. At a local restaurant, a Nepali worker struck up a conversation with me while waiting for his biryani. "I've been here a month," the man responded when asked about his experience in the country, "but I think I won't be here for long...the work is hard...only one day of rest so far...and the salaries? Very little." While difficult to put a number on the "little," he would certainly concur with the sentiment that the Gulf runs on cheap imported labor.

So the differences the Bahraini taxi drivers talked about may matter little to the migrant workers simply looking for a job. Across the region, workers exist for the benefit of the local majority. With no path to permanent residency or naturalization, foreign workers develop little emotional attachment to the country that they work in, seeing the place as only somewhere where money can be saved until an eventual return to the homeland with financial security. With little time or resources for leisure, these workers have little motivation to learn much about their second homeland aside from practical money matters.

For sure, differences exist between different countries across the Gulf, just as they would between any neighboring countries operating under different policies and governments even if cultural and linguist backgrounds are similar. And Bahrain may arguably be somehow called "better" than Kuwait, due to the claims of infrastructural superiority and the "niceness" of the people, as the taxi driver said, or the "liberalness" Lonely Planet claimed, based on the availability of alcohol and bars. But the difference is only significant for the region's elite, its moneyed citizens, tourists, and skilled expats.

To be really proud of how one country is "better" than another, it is important not just to invest in those aspects of greatness but also to create an environment where everyone living in the country, down to the most struggling workers, enjoys greatness in their everyday lives. Such universal accessibility may not entail some drastic increase in days off and wage levels that fundamentally upend the entire economic model of the Gulf, but it at least provide a semblance of true inclusiveness that is sorely lacking beyond superficial measures of ethnic neighborhoods.