The dilemma of transient societies

Dictionaries usually define an Ãmigre as "someone who leaves one country to settle in another". An expatriate is defined as a "person who is voluntarily absent from home or country". But what is the description of a person who is voluntarily or involuntarily absent from his/her home country indefinitely, and with only a transitory stay in the host country, and has no chance of settling there?

I am not aware that linguists have so far coined a term for this latter situation, which hundreds of thousands of people living in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states - labelled as expatriates out of convenience - find themselves in. Finding an appropriate term is secondary compared to the dilemma the host countries and non-residents have to cope with because of their unique residency status.

Under-populated and ambitious for expansion and growth, the GCC economies have a great appetite for absorbing human resources of different fields and multitudes of nationalities. In the midst of a spiralling un-natural population growth, the GCC governments have paid limited attention to the potential implications of the huge population that remains in an indefinite transient status.

It is not the intention here to argue that in the case of young societies where the vast majority of the population has an indefinite transient status, such societies are bound to be built on transient socio-cultural foundations, irrespective of how strong their economic base are proving to be.

My intention, however, is to draw more attention to uncertainty, if not the symptoms of socio-cultural identity trauma and the perpetual economic anxiety non-residents endure when they live in a society with uncertain residency status. The consequences of such situations are not limited to the expatriates alone but are bound to have serious implications on the host state and its indigenous population.

Although my assumptions are not based on research, as a researcher I feel that it is high time to address the psychological effects we go through as transient residents living in the different GCC countries.

One cannot make a sweeping generalisation about the intensity of these psychological uncertainties and anxieties across all age groups, marital status, socio-economic status, the time spent living in the GCC, the economic situation back in the home country, or how stable the political situation is at home.

The younger expatriates are bound to experience lower anxiety levels compared to those who are in their 50s and still not certain how they can plan for their retirement and where.

As a Lebanese in my early 50s and a father of two teenagers, the fact that I may be categorised as belonging to the upper middle income group does not spare me the worst of the anxieties about who am I as an individual, my national identity, the place I belong to, the community I belong to, the future I aspire to for myself and my family, the place I want to retire someday, or the two-square metre grave I would be buried in one day.

Uprooted by necessity from a country that has yet to manage to come to terms with itself, I find myself fighting lost battles on most of these fronts. For three days before I boarded the first plane into perpetual exile in early 1976, I was overwhelmed with the flow of well wishers. Thirty-years later, I visit and leave my home village virtually unnoticed. The severe erosion of my social roots in my home country is not compensated with establishing social and community roots in the UAE. I have so far spent one-third of my life in the GCC, yet social and societal detachment drain me out. The GCC countries do extremely well in creating the environment conducive for economic engagement, but my fear is they tend to falter in creating a comparable environment for social and societal engagement.

Imbalance

The implications of such imbalance are many, not on the future evolution of the GCC societies, but on shaping of the identity and aspirations of people who live in these young states, be it the expatriates or the citizens of these states.

Just as the front page of the appointments section of the newspapers across the Gulf, especially the English language ones, are full with opportunities for lucrative jobs, they are also alarmingly packed with advertisements for getting permanent visas in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Societies are built on the guarantee of permanency. In contrast, human settlements are built on transience. Ownership and social security constitute some of the primary pre-requisites for societal permanence. Social and psychological research have yet to tell us the long term implications of absence of both on the GCC countries and their inhabitants.

The more likely outcome is becoming habituated for thinking short-term benefits as opposed to long-term ones. For instance, absence of income and social taxes create the phony feeling of being better-off now, but deprive one from thinking for the long-term. It also means that the state is complacent about inculcating societal engagement of the people who live in the country.

True, all businesses operated by expatriates have to pay implicit taxes by getting sponsored by nationals as silent partners, which in effect is a type of socio-economic subsidy. But this economic relationship remains transient by its own nature. It only secures a residency visa. One's presence in the country is tied to such a contract, hence limiting one's choice or rather ability to establish permanency in the country.

Any shift from paying implicit taxes to a silent national partner to paying taxes directly to the state is bound to have many disruptive implications on the economic well-being of the country's nationals. But collecting taxes and then redistributing them for the benefits of all, especially those who have crossed a certain long stay in the country is bound to re-establish new grounds for reducing the dilemma the GCC states face while defining their relationships with the ever-growing expatriate population.

Time is high to shift gear into constructing economic and social polices that lay the grounds for a systematic and structured assimilation of the expatriate population. Implementation of these polices ought to be geared to breathing life in the concept of societal engagement.

Functioning societies are differentiated from human settlements by the degree of equilibrium they can strike between the societal engagement and economic engagement of the people who live in these states. Once we embark on that road we should be able then to coin new identifications for expatriates or émigres who are contributing to the building of these states.

Jihad N. Fakhreddine is an expert on public opinion polling.