Citizens Abroad

This book explores a critical and often neglected aspect of emigration fromMiddle Eastern countries. Rather than focusing on the policies of the statesreceiving Middle Eastern immigrants, Brand’s research studies the policies ofthose Middle Eastern states from which emigration originates. She attributesthis neglect to the chauvinism of scholars writing from the Americas andWestern Europe who have made their own countries the central actors of theirresearch. Her other theoretical contribution is to challenge and deconstructsimplistic and outdated conceptions of state sovereignty. She selects four casestudies (viz., Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan), noting each one’s variedlevels of involvement in the expatriates’ lives, the emigrants’ differentdestinations, and the dissimilar relationships between the expatriates and theircountries of origin. By bringing together four disparate cases in one book,Brand addresses the larger question of how emigration from states impactsthe originating states’ conceptions of their own sovereignty ...