Offshore Citizens

Combining the study of minorities with migrants, this book examines the citizenship and migration polices of the United Arab Emirates to show how time is used to construct and police national boundaries. It will be of interest to anyone seeking to understand the challenges of citizenship in an era of migration.

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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.