Frost Comparative Migration Studies (2024) 12:23 Stevens, 2013, 12). This approach of extending rights in implementation but not law also comes across in Jordan’s nationality-by-investment policies, as described below. On the other hand, Jordan’s labor policies toward Syrian refugees after the 2016 Jordan Compact highlight a case where the state promised to issue 200,000 Syrians work permits in law but found ways to sidestep this in implementation, including by using unions as proxy employers and issuing individuals multiple work permits (Lenner & Turner, 2018, 50). Overall, the intentional ambiguity in the cases analyzed here are not exceptions to Jordan’s citizenship policies toward refugee and migrant groups, but they are more obvious examples of it. This makes them more feasible to study in an authoritarian, “developing” context where there are substantial challenges to accessing data on implementation. Thus, they are diverse cases of intentional ambiguity that help to illustrate what intentional ambiguity is. Gaza refugee passports Gaza refugee access to Jordanian passports reflects how intentional ambiguity can extend a group’s rights. These refugees—who are Palestinian refugees that were displaced from the Gaza Strip to Jordan’s East Bank in the context of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War14—received access to Jordanian passports in implementation but not law, even though they never received Jordanian nationality in law or implementation. Their rights contrast with Palestinian refugees who arrived in Jordanian-held territories after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, who did receive access to Jordanian nationality and passports in law and implementation (Frost, 2022). Almost immediately after the Gaza refugees were displaced to Jordan, the government issued Jordanian passports to some of them, despite the absence of such noncitizen passports in law. In 1967 and 1968, the existing passports law of 1942 (last amended in 1964) gave Jordan’s King Hussein expansive discretion in distributing passports in Article 3.1 and did not include a provision concerning passports for non-Jordanians.15 Regardless, in 1967, Jordan started issuing passports to Gaza refugees in implementation. The government issued the first of these passports—a case of hidden intentional ambiguity—on a limited basis to Gaza refugees with jobs abroad but insufficient travel documents. U.S. officials speaking with Jordan’s Under Secretary of Interior, Sami Judeh, and King Hussein’s private secretary, Zaid Rifai, reported: “Both have advised us that with [the] exception of one group of 87 Gazan teachers who several months ago were issued Jordanian passports, no Gazan has gotten a Jordanian passport…The group of 87 had contracts to return to teaching positions in Libya but the Libyan authorities had refused to accept them unless they travelled on a Jordanian passport.”16 14 15 16 Most of these refugees are not from Gaza but were displaced during the 1948 War from what became Israel to Gaza. “Law Number 5 of 1942—Passports Law and Its Amendments,” March 9, 1942. Telegram from American Embassy in Amman, January 18, 1968, 1967–69 Subject Numeric File (SNF), REF Arab, U.S. National Archives College Park (USNACP). Page 9 of 18