44 Eftychia Mylona the fact that she could have claimed Egyptian citizenship and had access to the Egyptian labor market and other state resources without any limitations. Indeed, she assumed herself to be a Greek citizen. Once the Dodecanese passed under Greek control in 1947, Yorgos’s family, like others from the archipelago who until then had Italian papers, acquired Greek citizenship. Since dual citizenship was not allowed at the time, Yorgos and Polyxeni opted to claim Greek rather than Egyptian citizenship. Clearly their change in status had gone unnoticed by the Egyptian state.26 During the intense political upheaval of the mid-twentieth century, Dodecanese Greeks—like Yorgos, Polyxeni, and Elvira— moved through different documentary regimes and categories of legal belonging with the help of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate. The patriarchate’s role was instrumental in protecting Dodecanese Greeks between 1940 and 1945 by lying about their Italian papers and instead issuing them Egyptian ones. Under the millet system, the Greek Orthodox Church held religious and political power over the community. Elvira’s example demonstrates that the church’s power somehow continued even after new state identifications emerged. Indeed, individuals often resorted to religious authorities to sort out issues concerning their legal belonging.27 The cases of the Ottoman and Italian Aegean subjects in postOttoman Egypt expose the aftermath of the creation of modern states and resultant new forms of governmentalism. They shed light on the complex ways individuals were documented and surveilled in Ottoman Egypt and demonstrate what their access to citizenship looked like in post-1922 Egypt. Such cases highlight how state identifications were imposed on populations amidst colonization and state-building. Nevertheless, the Greek Orthodox patriarchate’s role illustrates that secular authorities and official governmental were not the only bodies that had power over their subjects. The church still held jurisdictional power, even after the dissolution of the millet system and the Ottoman Empire. As the case of Yorgos and Polyxeni illustrate, though categories of legal belonging can be imposed, Greeks in Egypt also managed to strategically opt into and out of such labels. As I explore below, when the nationalizing Egyptian state of the midtwentieth century began to directly tie labor opportunities to Egyptian citizenship, Greeks once more moved through categories. FOREIGNERS IN THE LABOR MARKET The number of Greeks in Egypt started to decrease after the 1930s. The official abolishment of the Capitulations at the Montreux Convention