Two defining characteristics of the UAE are the numerical minority status of its local population, and the hierarchy of ‘citizenship, migration, and residency systems’ among locals, expatriates, and migrant laborers. In response to their growing minority status, many Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, including the UAE, have become more stringent about their citizenship, nationality, and employment policies. Local populations increasingly have been nationalizing employment, restricting certain positions and professions to members of local populations. The natural questions to follow are: Why have UAE nationality and citizenship laws diverged from the anticipated ‘opening’ of nationality and citizenship policies that some assumed would accompany globalization? In the specific context of the UAE, what factors have shaped and changed these hierarchies over time? The theoretical literature that has addressed the liberalization of citizenship, migration and naturalization has predominately revolved around two poles relating to globalization: those factors that encourage liberalization (Soysal, 1994; Sassen, 1996), and those circumstances that contribute to its retrenchment (Ong, 1996; Hansen, 2002). In the specific context of the UAE, and the Gulf more generally, some have argued that the nature of the rentier economy lends itself to citizenship, migration, and nationality systems which limit the distribution of state benefits to the smallest pool of individuals possible. The following discussion, however, illustrates how the ‘tiering’ of rights associated with different resident communities is not a new phenomenon or exclusively associated with modern conceptions of globalization or oil rents. A cursory investigation of how nationality was constructed in the UAE illustrates how the British played an important role in the construction of nationality and ‘tired-citizenship, nationality, and residency system’ during the 1900’s leading to the establishment of the Federation of 1971. Through a ‘historical institutionalist approach,’ this paper endeavors to elucidate how this ‘tiered system’ put in place by the British would become an intrinsic dimension of the state-building process, and would lay the groundwork for the economic, political, and social organization of citizenship, nationality and migration systems in the given context. This paper will draw on archival research conducted at the Center for Documentation and Research in Abu Dhabi, UAE in 2008, Al-Jumaa Majed Center in Dubai in 2009, and archival research conducted at the National Archives of the UK during the summer of 2010.