The Crémieux Decree of 1870 did more than endow Algerian Jews with French citizenship; it stripped them of their indignity, first under the law of colonial power and ultimately in the view of Algerian Muslim society, which remained indigène.This paper explores, from a legal and sociological perspective, the performative-constitutive uses of citizenship by national communities in the region pursuing self-determination in its various forms, as well as the role of citizenship in thwarting those national ambitions by dividing and disfiguring the ‘nation’. International law is famously thin on questions of nationality. This is a double-edged sword. States in Russia’s orbit are vexed by the problem that passportization – as distinguished from the compulsory acquisition of an occupying power’s citizenship – does not obviously violate any accepted principle of international law. These states are left to protest by appeal to indeterminate legal concepts such as abuse of rights. But for semi-recognised ‘virtual states’ such as Palestine and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic which claim diasporic populations as their citizenry, this legal lacuna is an opportunity: passportization may help legitimise the ‘virtual state’ as a home state or kin state endowing its putative citizens with rights and obligations, thereby restoring ties frayed by fragmentation and the passage of time, restoring a sense of political belonging, and reinforcing the collective’s claim for return. In other words, passportization may facilitate the internal dimensions of statehood even as the external dimension remain frustrated. This paper builds on the concepts of liminality in contested state citizenship (Krasniqi, 2019) and citizenship constellations of contested states, recognised states, kin states, and patron states vying for the polity’s legal and emotional allegiance (Bauböck, 2010). In addition to the performative-constitutive potential of citizenship for Palestinians and Sahrawis, the paper examines situations in which the community exercising control over a contested space has refused, offered, or imposed its citizenship as a way of excluding, fragmenting, or assimilating dispossessed, native or minority communities. Its case studies include the denial of Republic of Cyprus citizenship to Cypriot children of Turkish origin, Israeli citizenship practices towards Palestinian residents of Jerusalem since 1967, Morocco’s imposition of citizenship on Sahrawis in Western Sahara and its use of citizenship to court Frente Polisario defectors.