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Neoliberal migration states in the Gulf: High-skilled migrants, domestic socio-legal reforms and the centralized migration management in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates

Froilan Malit & Yusra AlShanqityi

Asian and Pacific Migration Journal2025https://doi.org/10.1177/01171968251329562article
ABDC C
Weight
0.37

What the paper says

How and why do host states manage to attract and retain high-skilled migration in the Global South? Despite extensive socio-legal reforms, less analysis has examined the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states’ shift from laissez-faire to a centralized migration management for high-skilled migration. Using the cases of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), we argue that Global South host states employ a spectrum of “hard” and “soft” domestic socio-legal reforms as structural preconditions to optimize their domestic rent-seeking and geopolitical interests. Overall, the study highlights neoliberal migration states and their rent-seeking strategies from high-skilled migration in the Global South.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/01171968251329562

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@article{froilan2025,
  title        = {{Neoliberal migration states in the Gulf: High-skilled migrants, domestic socio-legal reforms and the centralized migration management in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates}},
  author       = {Froilan Malit & Yusra AlShanqityi},
  journal      = {Asian and Pacific Migration Journal},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/01171968251329562},
}

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Neoliberal migration states in the Gulf: High-skilled migrants, domestic socio-legal reforms and the centralized migration management in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates

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Evidence weight

0.37

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06
M · momentum0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.