This paper examines the role of migration in the making of the United Arab Emirates and of the Emirati national identity. Unlike other research that focuses on foreign workers primarily from South Asia, this paper takes a more global approach and shifts across multiple scales. Here the focus is on the UAE citizens, many of whom were born outside of the borders of the UAE state or trace their ancestry elsewhere. Using oral histories and field research, primarily in the northern regions of the UAE, the presentation traces changing migration patterns over the latter half of the twentieth century. Many long-term residents and citizens of the UAE arrived in the mid-1950s and early 1960s, before the discovery of oil attracted large-scale labor migration. This wave of migrants came from around the western rim of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf, from places as diverse as Socotra, Somalia, India, and Iran. At the same time, they were joined by a newer wave of modernizing Arab migrants, many involved in the nascent education and administrative sectors, whose pan-Arabist ideologies were crucial to the early identification of the UAE state with Arab nationality. This resulted in the privileging of Arab identity over the population’s more cosmopolitan Indian Ocean roots. The presentation also traces a more local type of migration, the movement of Emirati citizens from tight-knit neighborhood quarters in coastal port towns to state-sponsored housing in inland suburbs. This process, which took place beginning in the 1970s and accelerated dramatically in the 2000s, as the Emirates became a key regional node in the global economy. Migration to the suburbs had the effect not only of more strictly segregating UAE citizens from non-citizens, but also of locating citizen housing in the desert. For younger UAE citizens, this reinforced the official state privileging of Arab Bedouin heritage over seafaring, maritime narratives. Taken together, these patterns show how local, regional, and international patterns of migration have been a critical part of the UAE’s formation as both a nation and a state.