Preface

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has become a well-known destination for celebrities, politicians, scholars, tourists, and others in recent years. Those who visit the UAE may enjoy the numerous and varied recreational facilities, participate in international sporting competitions, attend conferences or summit meetings, or engage in other regional and world-class events. The transformation of the social and physical infrastructure from nationalization in 1971 to the present serves as a success case in rapid modernization. Most importantly, in a region filled with civil unrest and failing economies, the UAE remains politically stable and economically prosperous even through the global financial downturn in 2008. Therefore, it seems almost unbelievable that Emirati unemployment—specifically unemployment among young educated Emirati adults—has reached double digits in recent years. Concerns over rising Emirati unemployment in the early 2000s spurred the leadership of the country to initiate Emiratization policies, a type of “positive discrimination” that is characterized by some as detrimental to the country’s continuing development. To fully understand the complexities of Emirati unemployment and Emiratization, one must understand the creative and contributing factors through multiple lenses representing the perspectives of different stakeholders. This work attempts to describe the issues factually and impartially while presenting differing viewpoints when and where they exist. It is the differing viewpoints occurring simultaneously that make the issues interesting and worthy of an in-depth examination. This work is particularly needed because in the scant amount of research available on Emirati unemployment, Emiratization, and the UAE labor market, the issues are explored mostly using a simple labor supply and demand model. Workers are viewed as one of the factors of production, and motivation for work is expressed in an equilibrium wage that balances the competitive desire of maximizing wages among workers with the desire of maximizing profit among the employers. This type of explanation, although valuable from one economic perspective, is not complete.