Old and New Minorities in the Middle East: Squaring the circle through common solutions

Résumé

Diversity and integration issues are undoubtedly amongst the most
salient ones on today’s political agenda. This is especially true for the Middle
East, as the number of refugees and migrant workers (Fakhoury and Abi
Raad, 2018; Wihtol De Wenden, 2018), with distinctive identities in terms
of language, culture or religion who have settled in various countries in
the region, mainly for humanitarian and political reasons but also because
of differing economic situations in their countries of origin, have more
than doubled since 2005. The region is currently accommodating around
26 % of the world’s displaced persons, with countries such as Lebanon and
Jordan bearing the biggest share, accommodating approximately 57 % of
all regional refugees (United Nations Refugee Agency, 2015; Connor, 2016;
United Nations Database 2016). Additionally, Middle Eastern States host
around 17.8 million migrant workers, the majority being of Asian origin
but with sizeable numbers originating from Africa as well (International
Labour Organization, 2017).
The presence of large immigrant and refugee communities poses
manifold challenges in the sphere of societal as well as economic integration
(Fakhoury and Abi Raad, 2018), protection of individual and group rights,
and preservation of social cohesion and unity. Accommodation of diversity
and labour inclusion are indeed complementary and intimately intertwined,
thus one cannot be solved without the other. Consequently, any effective
mechanism for the governance of diversity not only in the Middle East