Migration and popular protest in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf in the 1950s and 1960s

Chalcraft, John ORCID: 0000-0002-0302-9306 (2011) Migration and popular protest in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf in the 1950s and 1960s. International Labor and Working Class History, 79 (1(S)). pp. 28-47. ISSN 0147-5479

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Abstract

The conventional historiography on popular and labor protest in the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf since the Second World War tends to ascribe a negative role to migration. Migrants-dragooned into the service of expanding oil economies-are often depicted as undermining the cohesion and efficacy of indigenous labor activism and popular protest. This article adopts a different perspective. It revisits the most important twentieth-century wave of pan-Arab, secular, republican, and socialist protest in the region-that of the 1950s and 1960s-and highlights the positive contribution migrants made. They were not just quotients of labor power, but interpretive and political subjects. Palestinians, Yemenis, and others, along with return-and circular-migrants, exiles, and visitors, transmitted pan-Arab and Leftist ideas, helped build activist organizations, and participated in a variety of protests. I suggest that standard forms of endogenous socioeconomic determinism in the labor history of the region need rethinking.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJourna...
Additional Information:	© 2011 International History and Working-Class History Inc
Divisions:	Government Middle East Centre
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DS Asia
Date Deposited:	29 Jun 2011 13:52
Last Modified:	20 Nov 2024 05:57
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/37005

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