Yemeni Labour: Mobility and Potential Assessment

Saudi Arabia’s recent policy changes relating to labour mobility as well as its efforts to control irregular migrants living and working in the kingdom have brought the issue of labour mobility and the impact of returning Yemenis to the forefront of Government of Yemen’s (GoY) attention, with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis having been forcibly returned over the past year. There is a severe scarcity of data and research on the scale and impact of labour mobility on the Yemeni economy or labour market; as a result, developing evidence-based and effective policies and programming relating to labour mobility or the reintegration of returning Yemenis is currently problematic.

The project aims to address this issue by filling critical knowledge gaps relating to labour mobility and its impact in Yemen. The project will include the commissioning of new quantitative and qualitative research relating to the scale of labour mobility as well as the impact of recent return flows on communities of origin. The project will also pull in recently developed and soon-to-be-published research generated by the World Bank and ILO, as well as other relevant sources, to draft a report that will provide a holistic understanding of the role labour mobility has played in the Yemeni economy and labour market (and society more broadly).

Furthermore it will deliver recommendations for effective policy and programming development surrounding labour mobility.

The research will aim to be policy-relevant, targeting an audience of GoY officials as well as relevant international organizations (IOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) operating in Yemen and working in labour mobility and development and will be disseminated at a launch event in Sana’a in order to raise awareness of the product among key stakeholders.