diaspora
Bhutanese in the Gulf States
More than 9,200 Bhutanese have gone to Kuwait alone under the state-run overseas employment programme since 2013, and over 7,700 remain across Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE — a labour-migration community that predates the Australia wave. Kuwait was Bhutan's third-largest remittance source in 2025; wage delays and regional conflict have exposed the community's vulnerabilities.
The Bhutanese communities in the Gulf states are the product of Bhutan's state-facilitated labour migration to the Arabian Peninsula, running since 2013 under the government's overseas employment programme. More than 9,200 Bhutanese have been sent to Kuwait alone since the programme began, and more than 7,700 Bhutanese workers remain employed across the Gulf — principally in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.[1]
The Gulf wave predates the far larger Australia migration wave and differs from it in kind: where Australia draws students and skilled emigrants moving on their own account, Gulf employment is contract labour arranged through the state — largely in hospitality, retail and services — undertaken to escape low wages at home rather than to settle abroad.
The overseas employment programme
The Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Employment (and its labour-ministry predecessors) recruits, places and monitors workers under the programme. The ministry's 2024-25 monitoring survey of 1,053 workers found women outnumbering men (659 to 394), reflecting demand in hospitality and retail, and recorded the workers' own stated motivations: career growth (47.25 per cent) and financial problems (46.02 per cent), against the backdrop of low wages in Bhutan.[1]
Remittances
The community's economic weight at home is visible in the central bank's remittance tables: Kuwait was Bhutan's third-largest source of inward remittances in 2025 at USD 19.3 million — behind only Australia (USD 253.3 million) and the United States — out of a national total of USD 342.9 million.[2]
Working conditions and vulnerabilities
The ministry's own monitoring identifies wage problems as the most common complaint raised by overseas workers. In 2025, more than a dozen Bhutanese employed by Kuwaiti companies came forward over non-payment and delays in monthly salaries and overtime allowances.[3] Regional instability adds a second layer of exposure: when conflict flared in the Middle East in 2025, Kuensel observed that it had exposed Bhutan's reliance on overseas employment in the region, with thousands of citizens working within range of the crisis.[4]
Unlike the resettled refugee diaspora or the Australia wave, Gulf workers hold temporary contracts with no path to residence or citizenship under the kafala-style employment systems of the region, making the community structurally transient: workers cycle home or onward rather than building permanent institutions abroad.
See also
- Bhutan–Australia migration wave
- Remittances to Bhutan
- Remit Bhutan
- Youth unemployment in Bhutan
- Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Employment
References
- Overseas Employment Program Monitoring 2024-2025, Survey Report — Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Employment
- Money sent home by Bhutanese overseas more than doubles in 2025 — Kuensel via Asia News Network, 13 March 2026
- Bhutanese workers in Kuwait raise concerns over delayed salaries — BBS, 2025
- Gulf conflict exposes Bhutan's reliance on overseas employment — Kuensel, 2025
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