42 Hein de Haas
and political instability in Morocco and Turkey (Avcı & Kirişci 2006; de
Haas 2007a; Entzinger 1985).
Moreover, the increasingly restrictive immigration policies and, in particu-
lar, the introduction of visa restrictions, had the paradoxical effect of pushing
migrants into permanent settlement rather than the reverse (Entzinger
1985; Fargues 2004). Subsequent massive family reunif ication heralded the
shift from circular to more permanent migration. This phenomenon mainly
explains why Moroccan and Turkish migrant populations kept on increasing
throughout the 1970s and 1980s, despite the off icial immigration stop.
1.3.4 The 1991 Gulf War turning-point
After a period of relatively steady labour migration from Egypt and other
MENA countries to the Gulf countries and Libya, and besides family mi-
gration from the Maghreb to Europe, a series of political upheavals (the
Gulf War, the outbreak of the Algerian Civil War and the UN embargo on
Libya) occurring in 1991-1992 played a major role in setting a number of
new migration trends.
Already, from 1983, the Iran-Iraq War, falling oil prices, and policies to
replace foreign labour with nationals, started to cause a certain decline
in the demand for Egyptian, North African and Turkish workers in GCC
countries. It was particularly the 1991 Gulf War that led to the massive
forced repatriation of migrants from GCC countries (Baldwin-Edwards
2005: 28). These events reinforced the already existing tendency in Gulf
countries to rely increasingly on Asian immigrants. This went together with
efforts to ‘indigenise’ the labour force of the Gulf countries to decrease their
dependency on migrants (IOM 2005).
Another major development which would impinge on regional migration
processes was the impact of the air and arms embargo imposed on Libya
by the UN Security Council between 1992 and 2000. Disappointed by the
perceived lack of support from his fellow Arab countries, Gaddaf i embarked
upon a radical reorientation of Libyan foreign policy towards sub-Saharan
African countries (Hamood 2006), positioning himself as an African leader
by developing a policy of creating alliances with and offering substantial
development aid to them. In this context of pan-African foreign policy, Libya
started to encourage sub-Saharan Africans to work in Libya (Hamood 2006;
Pliez 2002). In the early 1990s, most migrants came from Libya’s neighbours,
Sudan, Chad and Niger, which subsequently developed into transit countries
for migrants from a much wider array of sub-Saharan countries (Bredeloup
& Pliez 2005).