The talk of labor nationalization in the Gulf Cooperation Council — ‘Saudization’, ‘Emiratization’, ‘Qatarization’, etcetera — has dominated national policies and development plans for the past 20 years. Qatar’s national vision for 2030, for example, explicitly mentions “increased and diversified participation of Qataris in the workforce” as a goal for human development. Qataris have not taken to the streets to demand more jobs, but the protests that have shaken Bahrain and sporadically erupted in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia were, at least partially, an expression of economic grievances, specifically high rates of unemployment among the youth of both countries. To stave off the rumblings of potential uprisings, oil-rich regimes of the GCC have a two-pronged approach: defuse popular resentment by injecting enormous sums of money in the form of benefits and salary increases for the public sector, while brutally cracking down on dissent. In February 2011, Saudi King Abdullah
