Living in the UAE

The United Arab Emirates is a country built largely by people born elsewhere. Of its 11 million residents, 7.9M are foreign-born — 72% of the population — placing it 9th in the world by immigrant count. The workforce skews heavily toward South Asia, led by 3.2M from India, a million from Bangladesh, and over 900,000 from Pakistan, most of it contract labor that powers the economy. That foreign-born population has grown 19% in ten years, deepening a dependence on migration that already defines daily life here.