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Most states do not divulge all demographic parameters of their population. At times, this data is unavailable due to the weakness of the regime as is the case with many sub-Saharan African countries and, more recently, with Yemen, Syria, and Iraq due to their prolonged civil wars. While none of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have ever published the religious composition of their indigenous populations, Qatar has lagged further behind: It does not even make public the total size of its indigenous population, considered a national secret. Achieving high population growth by encouraging a high natural increase rate was and still is the basic demographic policy of the Qatari authorities. In this respect, the emirate is no different from other GCC states, such as the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. However, both censuses and official natural increase data indicate that the Qatari population grew significantly also due to two waves of naturalization. Adapted from the source document.

Die GCC-Staaten zeichnen sich durch ein weltweit einmaliges Muster internationaler Arbeitsmigration aus. Die Zuwanderung ausländischer Arbeitskräfte setzte bereits in den späten 1940er Jahren ein, nahm aber nach dem Ölboom im Oktober 1973 eine neue Dimension an: Ausländer/-innen stellen seither nicht nur eine Mehrheit in der Erwerbsbevölkerung der GCC-Staaten (mit Ausnahme von Oman). In Katar, den Vereinigten Arabischen Emiraten und Kuwait übersteigt ihre Zahl auch diejenige der einheimischen Bevölkerung insgesamt. Zwar bemühen sich die Regierungen der GCC-Staaten darum, die ausländischen Arbeitskräfte nach und nach durch einheimische Arbeitskräfte zu ersetzen. Diese Strategie schlägt aber bislang vor allem in der Privatwirtschaft fehl.

Although labor migration is not new to the GCC states, dating back to the beginning of the oil era in the late 1940s, following the October 1973 "oil boom" a unique labor migration pattern developed in these countries: not only did the nationals rapidly become a minority in the workforce (with the exception of Oman) but in Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait, the foreigners constitute a substantial majority of the total population as well. Although the authorities of the GCC states tried to gradually replace foreign workers by native ones, these policies widely failed especially in the private sector. The country profile explains why this is so and what else is unique about labor migration in the GCC states.

At first glance, in contrast to political documents, official demographic data, particularly total population figures, "look innocent." The common tendency is to accept them "as is" because governments tend not to manipulate the declared number of their citizens. In most cases this assumption is true. Is it also true for Saudi Arabia? In the 1970s and 1990s, Saudi authorities published the results of two demographic censuses that numbered the Saudi citizenry at 6,218,361 in September 1974 and 12,310,053 in September 1992. However, many experts found these figures to be highly inflated, as shown in the table.