Ali and Cochrane Comparative Migration Studies (2024) 12:16 2022). This approach has helped the country to maintain its economic growth even in the face of fluctuations in oil prices. The UAE’s strategic location as a hub for trade and commerce between Asia, Africa, and Europe has also contributed to its economic success. Citizenship and residency The country’s history of citizenship and residency can be traced back to the formation of these individual emirates and the social and political structures that developed within them. In the pre-oil era, the UAE was a collection of small, independent emirates with different social and political structures. The inhabitants of these emirates were organized primarily around kinship affiliations, and citizenship was not a formal concept. Local leaders, known as Sheikhs, were responsible for administering justice, maintaining order, and providing protection to their subjects. The discovery of oil in the 1950s and 1960s dramatically transformed the social and economic landscape of the region (Ulfstein, 2022). In the UAE, citizenship was initially granted based on descent from one of the original families of the emirates. The consolidation of citizenship regimes in the UAE coincided with broader changes in the region. The formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981 brought together the countries of the Arabian Gulf region, including the UAE, and led to the development of a common legal framework for citizenship and residency. The GCC countries all share common historical, cultural, and linguistic ties, and the development of a unified framework for citizenship and residency was seen as an important step towards greater regional integration (Ulfstein, 2022). The naturalization process is stringent in the UAE. The law allows foreigners to become citizens of the country after a minimum of 30 years of residency in the UAE, subject to certain conditions. Exceptional candidates such as doctors, investors, scientists, creative minds, investors may be nominated by the Royals and officials for citizenship. The naturalization process is not automatic, and each application is reviewed on a case-by-case basis (Immigrant Invest, 2023). The country’s population is made up of a large number of migrant workers, many of whom have lived in the country for decades without formal legal status. The issue of statelessness, in particular, has been a persistent problem. In the mid-2000s, the government launched a campaign to identify and register stateless individuals, known as "bidoon," by providing them with identification documents, and the granting of citizenship to a limited number of individuals. However, according to the Report on Bidoon in the UAE, which was published on the website of the Geneva Council for Human Rights Advancement (GCHRA), these initiatives have not been successful in resolving the problem of statelessness, and that Bidoon continues to face discrimination and marginalization (Geneva Council, 2019). In recent years, the UAE has taken steps to address some of these issues around citizenship. The President of the UAE, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has recently issued a directive to address the challenges faced by children with Emirati mothers and non-Emirati fathers in obtaining citizenship (Khaleej Times, 2022). Currently, these children do not automatically qualify for citizenship. The directive aims to improve their rights by granting them equal access to healthcare and education benefits enjoyed by other citizens. Although the exact details and impact of the directive are yet to be clarified, it is seen as a positive step towards resolving the issue (Abbas, 2023). The country Page 11 of 17