was the subject of a lecture presentation by Dr. Ijaz Shafi Gilani, the Chairman of the Pakistan Institute of Public Opinion, Gallup International Association's Pakistani affiliate (PIPO-GIA), which was held at the premises of the Bahrain Centre for Studies and Research (BCSR) near Awali on Monday 12 May.

In his lecture, Dr. Gilani focused on the Multinational Workforce in Global Megacities, taking Pakistan as a case study, and he provided the historical background on the outflow of the Pakistani labour force to the Gulf and the current composition of the workforce in this region.  In 2008 it was estimated that there were approximately two million Pakistani workers in the Gulf countries. These workers include professional workers such as doctors, engineers, and accountants, as well as technicians, skilled and unskilled workers. The majority of these workers are in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with a sizeable number of workers in Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar.

In his presentation, Dr. Gilani stressed that the multinational composition of Global Megacities, and in the case of the GCC countries "global states", should be seen as a strength and an opportunity in a globalized world, not as a weakness or a threat.  He added that we must "think out of the box" and not just in terms of traditional employment, as the work of the future may be conceived of in terms of "mobile livelihoods" where employment is not always fixed in one place. Dr. Gilani emphasized the need for Bahrain and the GCC states to have a more outward and global focus in a world that is reshaping, so as to seize new business opportunities.

Dr. Abdulla Al-Sadiq, the Secretary-General of the BCSR who chaired the meeting, noted that the growth in GDP in the Gulf region has gone hand-in-hand with the increase in the growth of the labour force and that Bahrain and the GCC countries could not have been sustained without expatriate labour.

Dr. Ijaz Gilani is the Chairman and founder of the Pakistan Institute of Public Opinion, Gallup International Association's Pakistani affiliate, which specializes in opinion and marketing research, and which has trained an entire generation of researchers in Pakistan. 

Dr. Gilani received his doctorate in Political Science from Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977.  He taught in the Department of International Relations at Quaid-i-Azam University from 1977 to 1987, and he also served as Chairman of the Department of International Relations from 1980-81.  Dr. Gilani served as an adviser to the Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1991 to 1993, and was Chairman of the Prime Minister's Committee for Research and Analysis, an in-house think tank.

Dr. Gilani has also held a number of other prestigious research and advisory posts. He has headed and successfully completed over 100 research projects in the field of social and economic development, strategic studies and political behaviour.