Frost C  omparative Migration Studies (2024) 12:23 (Hamed-Troyansky, 2017). Since 1946, Jordan has received waves of Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi, and Syrian refugees, as well as smaller numbers from other countries, such as Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. Jordan’s policies toward refugees have never materialized in a domestic refugee law or international refugee conventions because Jordan, like most countries in the region, has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol (Janmyr & Stevens, 2021). Instead, different Jordanian domestic laws and implementing measures constitute refugee policies. Thus, a key trait that differentiates Jordan’s refugee groups is whether they have access to Jordanian nationality. Essentially, all the groups that arrived prior to 1954 received Jordanian nationality (Frost, 2022), but the groups that arrived after 1954—with the exception of the displaced Palestinian refugees arriving from Jordan’s West Bank to its East Bank after the 1967 War12—have not. Jordanian nationality is valuable because it signifies being a Jordanian citizen and it provides all the legal rights associated with citizen status, including rights to vote, run for office, work in all sectors, attend public schools, and own property (Frost, 2021). Jordan has not always adopted intentionally ambiguous policies toward its refugees. Before 1967, Jordan largely adopted “unambiguous” policies. However, once Jordan lost the West Bank to Israeli occupying forces during the 1967 War and as Palestinian nationalism grew and challenged Jordan’s claims to represent Palestinians, it politically became more difficult for Jordan to adopt unambiguous inclusive policies toward new Palestinian refugees. The Gaza refugees are an exemplary case for this development because they received no rights in law but received many in implementation, as described below. The 1970 war between the Jordanian army and militants associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) shifted Jordan’s perspective toward refugees from the West Bank, who the government viewed as PLO sympathizers (Brand, 1988, 168–177). In this context, domestic security imperatives urged more exclusionary policies toward this group in implementation, but popular opinion, economic concerns, and regime goals to regain the West Bank prevented the adoption of more exclusionary laws. By 1988, numerous political changes occurred that pushed King Hussein to rescind Jordan’s claims to the West Bank (Abu Odeh, 1999, 224–229), and after announcing this disengagement, new challenges arose in dealing with refugees and other migrants who had moved (often forcibly) from the West to the East Bank since 1967. The large number of these Palestinians, as well as uncertainties about how permanent the disengagement would be,13 militated against adopting more exclusionary policies toward them in law; however, domestic security and diplomatic concerns pushed for excluding more of them from the Jordanian citizenry, as described in the nationality revocations case below. Jordan’s gradual introduction of intentionally ambiguous policies toward Palestinian refugees has informed its policies toward other refugee and migrant groups. For example, like the Gaza refugees, Jordan did not adopt new laws governing any waves of Iraqi refugees. Instead, the rights they received reflected implementing measures, such as those preventing Iraqi deportations (Chatelard, 2002, 12; 12 13 Jordan formally united with the West Bank in 1950, after annexing it during the 1948 War. Letter from Prime Minister’s Private Secretary “Prime Minister’s Meeting with King Hussein,” September 5, 1988, Foreign & Commonwealth Office Folder 93/5239, The National Archives of the UK at Kew. Page 8 of 18