This paper explores the ways in which claims to citizenship, or lack thereof, shaped how social movements used law to frame their demands on the Kuwaiti state in the 1980s and 1990s. This was a formative time for Kuwaiti mobilization, particularly on behalf of two disenfranchised populations—women and Bedoon (stateless Kuwaiti residents). Bedoon were excluded from many entitlement programs available to citizens, and, like Kuwait women, could not fully participate in Kuwait’s increasingly participatory parliamentary system. Women’s activism centered heavily on voting rights, while Bedoon advocates focused primarily on the economic and social elements of citizenship. Women’s and human rights NGOs often worked together to accomplish overlapping pragmatic goals, however, their ability to invoke citizenship status generated two different visions of the political future: one that expanded political rights of citizenship to women while largely preserving the economic status quo, and one that challenged the foundations of the relationships of economic entitlement between the state and its residents. Women's NGOs, acutely aware of their citizenship privilege, primarily drew on domestic constitutional law to make legal claims for voting and full political participation. They often distanced themselves from international law, instead articulating a version of gender equality that drew on Kuwaiti national identity. In contrast, Kuwaiti human rights organizations embraced the universal claims of international human rights law to promote a broader vision of equality. Women’s organizations were more confrontational and ultimately more successful, despite the more expansive concept of social change within human rights law. This paper argues that law served a flexible tool in constituting complementary but distinct visions of citizenship that went beyond voting rights and encompassed the economic and social relationships between individuals and the state.