Across the Gulf Cooperation Council, a quiet but consequential debate is gathering pace: whether the region's rigid, sponsor-dependent labour frameworks are finally giving way to something more suited to a 21st-century knowledge economy. The latest signal comes from Kuwait, where an image circulating on social media purports to show a government study examining the feasibility of a freelance residency permit — a so-called freelance visa or iqama — for expatriate workers.
The document has not been confirmed as enacted policy. Kuwaiti authorities have not issued an official announcement, and labour analysts caution against reading it as an imminent regulatory shift. But that the discussion is happening at all — and that it is being shared widely among the Gulf's expatriate community — speaks to a deeper structural tension that policymakers across the region can no longer afford to ignore.
The Kafala System Under Pressure
The kafala, or sponsorship system, has governed migrant labour across the Gulf for decades. Under its framework, a worker's legal status in the country is tied directly to a single employer. The arrangement was designed for an era of large infrastructure projects and domestic service employment. It was never built for the gig economy, remote work, or the growing class of digital professionals who move between clients, projects, and borders with increasing fluidity.
"The kafala model made sense when you were importing construction labour for a defined project with a defined endpoint," said one Gulf-based labour economist, speaking on background given the political sensitivity of the topic. "It makes almost no sense for a UX designer working with five different clients across three time zones."
Qatar has already moved further than most in reforming its system. Following sustained international pressure ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Doha abolished the exit permit requirement and introduced limited protections allowing workers to change employers without employer consent — steps the International Labour Organization described as meaningful, if incomplete. Bahrain introduced a flexible work permit as early as 2021. The UAE, which launched its freelancer visa and remote work visa programmes, has positioned itself as the most permissive environment in the region for independent professionals.
Kuwait's Moment of Discussion
Kuwait's situation is particular. The country has one of the highest expatriate-to-citizen ratios in the world — foreign nationals account for roughly 70 percent of the population, and an even higher share of the private sector workforce. For years, successive governments have debated "Kuwaitisation" policies to replace expatriate workers with nationals, yet the private sector has remained heavily reliant on foreign talent.
The freelance visa discussion, whatever its current status, reflects a recognition that the binary choice between a full-time sponsored worker and an undocumented freelancer is no longer tenable. A growing cohort of skilled professionals — software engineers, consultants, designers, educators — are seeking arrangements that allow them to work independently while maintaining legal residency. Without a framework to accommodate them, many simply operate in grey zones, or leave the country.
"What Kuwait and other Gulf states are grappling with is the mismatch between the formal legal architecture they inherited and the informal economic reality that has already emerged," said a regional policy analyst familiar with GCC labour reform discussions. "The freelance visa, wherever it is in the pipeline in Kuwait, is an attempt to bring law into alignment with practice."
The Broader GCC Trajectory
In Qatar, the trajectory of reform is instructive. The Ministry of Labour's post-2020 changes were partly driven by external accountability — the ILO's technical cooperation programme, pressure from European football associations, and documentary journalism that made conditions in the construction sector impossible to ignore. But Doha's policymakers have also made an affirmative case for reform: that a more portable, more rights-protective labour framework ultimately serves Qatar's long-term economic interests by attracting higher-skilled workers.
Qatar's National Vision 2030, which sets out the emirate's ambition to transition from a hydrocarbon-dependent economy to a knowledge-driven one, explicitly requires talent retention and attraction. You cannot build a knowledge economy on a labour model that treats every worker as a temporary import.
The same logic applies across the GCC. Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 reforms have included expanded freelancer permit categories. The UAE has gone furthest in experimenting with visa flexibility. And now Kuwait, traditionally the most conservative of the major Gulf labour markets on this question, appears to be at least studying the direction of travel.
In Qatar, as among small but wealthy states, strategic positioning and soft power create influence beyond military might. But increasingly, the competition for skilled mobile workers is becoming its own form of soft power contest — and the Gulf states that reform their labour frameworks most intelligently will be best positioned to attract the talent that post-oil prosperity requires.
The Kuwait freelance visa document may or may not become policy. But the conversation it has sparked is real, and it is not going away. Discussion of the proposed framework has spread rapidly among Gulf expatriate communities, a reminder that in the age of social media, even a study can reshape expectations — and sometimes, expectations reshape policy.
