2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(2) result of inefficient bureaucracy, but rather as a conscious strategy employed by state authorities to further security, political and economic interests. The book is structured with chapters focused on the different groups and profiles of people affected by prolonged naturalisation processes and ambiguous citizenship statuses. This approach gives a comprehensive presentation of the issue, while shedding light on the varying experiences of the affected communities over time. These empirical chapters (2–6) are woven together by threads drawn out in the first chapter, which provides a literature review and theoretical framing. The introduction to the book opens with an absurd, Kafkaesque tale. Because he cannot trace his paternal lineage back to the Arab tribes present in 1925 on what is now the territory of the UAE, 5 Ibrahim must go through a naturalisation application even though his family have resided on that land for generations. After years of struggling for recognition as a citizen in his country of birth, Ibrahim suddenly and mysteriously becomes a citizen. He is not, however, a citizen of the UAE, but of the Union of the Comoros without even knowing of the latter country’s existence. This is the result of the UAE’s unprecedented strategy to solve the status of its domestic minority groups by outsourcing their naturalisation claims to a foreign island state they are never permitted to visit. 6 In purchasing citizenship documents on their behalf, the UAE makes unrecognised Emiratis become ‘foreign’ residents in their country of origin. Against the background of Ibrahim’s case, Chapter 1 outlines the concept of limbo and precarious citizenship by drawing on wider literature on precarity and precariousness in the social sciences and international relations. A complementary notion is found in Rainer Bauböck’s distinction between mobility and migration — the former movement is for privileged individuals (eg Western travellers) while the latter is often experienced in conjunction with precarious situations. 7 In this chapter, Lori also draws usefully on Vora’s pioneering work on the experiences of Indians in Dubai to consider the differentiated statuses within one diaspora/immigrant community: eg different generations of guest workers, some serving as non-citizen sponsors for others. 8 Building on this understanding of the nuanced differentiation within communities (across generations, legal status and social standing), which are themselves heterogeneous, in Chapter 2 Lori provides an account of the rich history of population movements for Persians, East Africans and South Asians to the Gulf region, and specifically into the area that makes up the present-day UAE. She establishes that the region hosted a diverse ethnic population, with communities originating in parts of eastern Africa, South Asia and Persia socially and economically integrated in local life prior to the discovery of oil in 1958. 9 Lori then introduces the critically different approaches to incorporation within the citizenry by the two main emirates, Abu Dhabi and Dubai (each associated with different tribal groupings historically). She argues that the differences in the two models are based on the emirates’ respective primary economic activities. 5 6 7 8 9 Lori usefully draws on the concept of a ‘countdown deadline’ as a constructed cut-off point used to define inclusion in the state: see Elizabeth F Cohen, The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice (Cambridge University Press 2018). Lori (n 1) 1–4. Rainer Bauböck, ‘Democratic Representation in Mobile Societies’ in Anna Triandafyllidou (ed), Multicultural Governance in a Mobile World (Edinburgh University Press 2017) 283, 295–96. Neha Vora, Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora (Duke University Press 2013). Lori (n 1) 52–77. 356