The Gulf millennial is often lost in stories of migration, of economic transformation, and change in oil economies. Studies of labour almost entirely ignore Gulf citizens, outside passing remarks on their concentration in the public sector and weak representation in the private sector. Yet forces of inclusion and exclusion play across both national and expatriate divides in Gulf economies. This paper examines shifting notions of economic belonging and citizenship in the Sultanate of Oman. Nationals in Oman may have citizenship and permanence in the country, but are marginalised in economic production by their weak representation in the private sector. Non-nationals, though comprising the majority of private-sector workers, in many ways ‘belong’ in different sectors of the private sector yet have no political claim on permanence in the country. The divisions within these groups construct different senses of belonging and not belonging, resulting in tenuous economic citizenship. These patterns can have serious repercussions on future stability during times of economic crisis. This year protests about unemployment have again made headlines and prompted a flurry of policy announcements. Drawing from multi-year ethnographic and new survey research, this paper interrogates senses of belonging among Omani millennials. In so doing, it not only sheds light on the competing pressures in the governance of Gulf labour markets, but also contributes to scholarly understandings of economic citizenship and Gulf labour-market complexities in a globalised context.

Wadi Madha, a tiny Omani geopolitical exclave enveloped by Emirati territory, occupies an ambiguous space in the modern nation-state of Oman. In their search for economic opportunity and a more exciting life, many young Madhani men have, in recent years, either naturalised as Emirati citizens, or migrated to mainland Oman. The Omani state, however, continues to invest heavily in the exclave, as it cuts through mountains to connect remote hamlets to main roads, expands health and education infrastructures, and “imports” other Omanis to staff local state and security apparatuses. In doing so, it competes directly with the Emirati state, which also seeks to establish a stronger presence in the even smaller counter-enclave of Nahwa, located within Wadi Madha’s borders. Historically, the present-day borderlands were home to tribal confederations whose allegiance vacillated between Muscati sultans and various sheikhs in Trucial Oman. Today, Madhanis’ sartorial preferences, use of Emirati dirhams, and admiration for the feats of the late Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan are but a few signs that muddle straightforward notions of Omani national belonging. Building on a combined 17 months of ethnographic research in Oman since 2011, this paper draws on two recent rounds of fieldwork (2017, 2018) in Wadi Madha to think through questions on national identity, citizenship, and belonging in Oman, and more specifically along the Oman-UAE border. On the one hand, it aims contribute to what little scholarship exists on the Omani state’s continuous efforts to incorporate peripheral, non-coastal identities into the new category of “Omani citizen” (see e.g. Valeri 2009, Jones and Ridout 2015). It traces how national education, the celebration of newly “national” and Islamic heritage, state ceremonies, and large-scale state employment have the potential to engender various modes of belonging in Omani citizens. On the other hand, this paper seeks to balance such a top-down narrative of “being-made” with an ethnographic account of Madhanis’ “self-making” (Ong 1996). It argues that Madhanis, and, indeed, many other Omanis and Khaleejis living in the borderlands have to negotiate contending senses of belonging---an ongoing process that complicates existing perspectives on citizenship and national identity.

Through an analysis of the Free Kuwait Campaign, this paper explores how events on the ground can influence Islamists’ intellectual and practical positions towards national belonging. Many Islamist groups experience tension between belonging to the broad Islamic umma and the modern nation-state, a theme highlighted in much of the academic literature on Islamism. Rather than examining the writings of Islamist thinkers, this study attempts to trace ideological development on the grassroots level, drawing on the archives of Kuwaiti student groups as well as interviews. It examines how the Islamist Kuwaiti students’ movement in the UK, led by the youth of the Muslim Brotherhood, came to spearhead the Free Kuwait Campaign during the Second Gulf Crisis in 1990-91. Through participating in this campaign, the Islamist youth experienced significant change in their ideas and practices towards other Kuwaiti political and societal groups. They forged a new identity that integrated loyalty to the nation with the umma notion of Islamic brotherhood. Moreover, a qualitative leap in pragmatic political thought emerged among these youths, with far-reaching implications for the future of the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood. In the immediate post-invasion era, there were calls from inside the group to create an open and inclusive political organization with a national platform. Although this project failed to materialize, the Muslim Brotherhood’s student wing, al-I’tilafiyya, was influenced by this new tendency. Al-I’tilafiyya became more accepting of others, leading to many students from other ideologies joining its ranks. In addition, nationalistic ideas crept into Islamist thought and identity in the post-invasion era. National belonging came to occupy greater space in the discourse of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it was thus able to present itself to Kuwaiti society as more nationalistic.

Periodizing Arabian Peninsular Baloch history is one of the unresolved challenges in understanding and analyzing the Arabian Peninsula’s belonging dynamics, citizenship formations, and the role of historiography in these processes. The Baloch, one of the significant transnational ethnic groups in the Arabian Peninsula, has arguably contributed significantly in various political, socioeconomic, and cultural capacities to the societies that they have constituted over the past centuries. Yet, they remain marginalized or misrepresented in the historiography of the Arab Gulf states. In this paper, I aim to historically recontextualize the Baloch people beyond what is depicted in the existing scholarship—portrayed merely as ‘mercenary soldiers’ serving in the armed forces of the Arab Gulf monarchies. The current historiography has resulted in reducing the Baloch to a monolithic category as a ‘warrior race’ that was integrated under the patronage of consecutive ruling dynasties. In my research, I advocate for a revision of this misplaced historical conceptualization that has been articulated in most of the academic publications. Drawing upon recent fieldwork as well as primary documentations and archives, particularly a medieval Arabic/Persian source from the 10th century, I argue that the current scholarship misplaces the periodization of Baloch migration to the Arabian Peninsula and the subsequent migratory waves which resulted in distorting the nature of their identity development and sense of belonging across the Sea of Oman and the Arab Gulf States. By contrast, my presentation reestablishes the periodization of the Peninsular Baloch diasporic history and delinks it from the dynastic periods that essentialize them as simply ‘paid fighters’ departing from Balochistan and crossing the Sea of Oman in the 17th century. I thus ask: how the existing narratives are constructing historical discourses and shaping temporal perceptions of the migratory movements around and across (post)colonial borders of Balochistan and the Arab Gulf states? By recontextualizing the Baloch history in the light of their earliest documented contact with the Southern Arabian littoral societies, I demonstrate the importance of theorizing their history within the longue durée of the region that extends beyond that of the ruling dynasties and modern military markets.