Offshore Citizens: Permanent Temporary Status in the Gulf

by Noora Lori

Overview

When it comes to extending citizenship to certain groups, why might ruling elites say neither 'yes' nor 'no', but 'wait'? The dominant theories of citizenship tend to recognize clear distinctions between citizens and aliens; either one has citizenship or one does not. This book shows that not all populations are fully included or expelled by a state; they can be suspended in limbo - residing in a territory for protracted periods without accruing citizenship rights. This in-depth case study of the United Arab Emirates uses new archival sources and extensive interviews to show how temporary residency can be transformed into a permanent legal status, through visa renewals and the postponement of naturalization cases. In the UAE, temporary residency was also codified into a formal citizenship status through the outsourcing of passports from the Union of Comoros, allowing elites to effectively reclassify minorities into foreign residents.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108498173
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/22/2019
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Noora Lori is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. She was a scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and received the 2014 Best Dissertation Award from the Migration and Citizenship section of the American Political Science Association.

Table of Contents

1. Limbo statuses and precarious citizenship; 2. Making the nation: citizens, 'guests' and ambiguous legal statuses; 3. Demographic growth, migrant policing, and naturalization as a 'national security' threat; 4. Permanently deportable: the formal and informal institutions of the Kafāla system; 5. 'Taʿāl Bachir' (come tomorrow): the politics of waiting for identity papers; 6. Identity regularization and passport outsourcing: turning minorities into foreigners; 7. Conclusion; 8. Methodological appendix; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

‘This pathbreaking book asks the critical yet curiously understudied question of how citizenship in Arab Gulf states is constructed – a question with great stakes given the benefits of nationality in the small, oil rich countries of the region. Lori identifies a new approach to dealing with domestic minorities while constructing national communities – the outsourcing of national membership.' Melani Cammett, Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University

‘Offshore Citizens might also have been titled'Kafka Comes to the Middle East'. We learn that, as in Kafka's parable ‘Before the Law', many in the United Arab Emirates await their turn to enter the exalted status of citizenship but are denied, even though they wait dutifully their entire lives. Noora Anwar Lori tells the tale of the many ‘permanent temporary' guest workers whose citizenship is ‘outsourced' to the tiny Union of Comoros, which supplies them with passports although they have no connection to the country. These persons live in a permanent limbo in the UAE, even though they were born in the Emirates and have never known anywhere else. Surreal and disturbing, but all too real for those permanent non-Arab guest workers who live it. A fascinating study of the ‘spectrum' of citizenship statuses in the region with the world's largest proportion of non-citizens.' John Torpey, City University of New York

From the Publisher