FAMILIAL ADAPTATIONS TO THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF ...

Introduction
FAMILIAL ADAPTATIONS TO THE INTERNATIONALIZATION
OF EGYPTIAN LABOUR*
The rise of oil prices during the first part
prompted
of the past
much
decade
discussion
has
of the relations between
corporations,
OPEC, the and the
oil
oil-importing industrial
the
countries
distribution
which also of oil.
dominate
Less attention has been
changes
Extended
that
to internal
have accompanied the oil boom, notably
out/inflow
the effects
of skilled
of
and
the
unskilled labour
Middle
from the
East,
poor
and
countries
into the
of
rich
the
oil-producing states.
labour
This
movement
relatively
has
recent
had more dramatic effects on both the
and
labour-importing
the labour-exporting countries than the waves
Western
of
Europe
migrant
following
labour into
the last World War (Halliday
effects
1977; UN
have
1982).
been analyzed
These
primarily from the perspective
and regional
of macroeconomics
politics. Less prevalent are anthropological studies of the
effects of labour migration.
With minor exceptions, the important
internationalization
developments surrounding
of labour
the
in the Middle East are
serious
yet to receive
consideration
the
of anthropologists.1
In
that
a
deals
recent
with
review
anthropological
article
studies of returning migrants
a bibliographic
(Gmelch 1980),
listing of ninety-three entries, contains not a single
reference to Middle Eastern
studying
migrants.
other parts
At a
of
time
the
when
world
some
hdve
anthropologists
focused
national
on migration
boundaries) (even
to
within
examine the major propositions
paradigm
of the world
through
system
ethnographic approaches (Nash
concerned
1981),
with
anthropologists
issues of development and underdevelopment
have
in
yet
the
to
Middle
produce
East
empirical research contexualized
transformations. in regional
We have yet to utilize the microanalytic
perspective anthropological
to flesh out generalizations about regional transformations
related to labour migration.
The limited number of anthropological
migration
studies of
have
Egyptian
focused on
labour
labour export primarily
transformation
in relation to
(hopkins
rural
1980; Awni 1982, 1984; Khafagy
Daeif
1984;
1982).
Khattab
This
and
paper
El
draws on such anthropological
research
studies
in
and
the
on
village
my own
of Bahiya, 2 as well as on
the
more
effect
general
of international
accounts of
migration on labour-exporting
an overview
Egypt. Following
of the pattern of Egyptian labour migration,
extended to
attention
the economic
is
and political consequences of labour export. The
next major
*This paper was originally prepared for discussion at the Conference
"Family,
on
Law, and Change in the Middle East," organized by
Science
the Social
Research Council. Tuxedo, New York, October 26-29, 1983.