REALM Funds Three New Projects on Labor Migration

Building the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, UAE

The Research and Empirical Analysis of Labor Migration (REALM) project is proud to announce the launch of three new funded projects this fall, located in India, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and SudanREALM aims to fund collaborative research that will advance our understanding of low skilled labor migration to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, with the objective of shedding light on the processes that sustain unfair practices in migrant labor. 

Each of these studies asks questions important for understanding the dynamics of labor migration. “A Panel Study of Migration from South India” adds a 2018 wave of survey data to the Kerala Migration Study, building on past waves of a longitudinal household study in Kerala, India, and includes rich information about the lives and finances of migrant families. Sajida Ally’s “Sri Lankan Migrant Workers in Kuwait and their Entitlements to Healthcare” uses ethnographic field research to understand how international labor brokerage networks mediate the structure and process of healthcare entitlement in Kuwait. Finally, Osman Nour’s project on Sudanese labor migrants seeks to uncover the consequences of new Saudi financial policies towards Sudanese migrants, their dependents, and the Sudanese economy as a whole.

We look forward to seeing what these innovative studies will bring to conversations on labor migration! For more information on these specific studies and others, please see our current projects page.