Time and its miscounting: methodological challenges in the study of citizenship boundaries

One would think that, after years of fieldwork and writing, I would be able to answer a pretty simple and straightforward question about who exactly I interviewed for my study of citizenship boundaries in the UAE: “Do you have any notion of the proportions [of interlocuters] of the different ethnic or descent lines that you spoke to?” This essay is about why it is so difficult to answer this question and the insights into citizenship that unfolded as I searched for an empirical answer. Spoiler alert: Answers to questions about “national” or “ethnic” origin are entirely dependent upon how we count—and miscount—time.Published versionAccepted manuscrip

A political economy of global security approach to migration and border control

Population movements have causes and consequences for both global security and the economic and security considerations of states. Migration itself is inexorably intertwined with global security outcomes, in the form of instability, state fragility, transnational terrorism and crime, and the radicalization (or perceived radicalization) of migrants and host societies.While modern states may have monopolized the authority over legitimate movement, they have never fully captured the management and enforcement of migration flows. Instead, market actors play key roles in determining migration outcomes—including the scale, direction, and violence associated with migration flows. Migration outcomes are, thus, critically constituted by two key forces—the security priorities of states and the complementary and competing forces of privatization and profit-making. While market forces undermine state control over migration, states have buffered and further consolidated their power over mobility by harnessing private actors and markets toward migration management and border control. We situate migration management and border control as a political economy of security issue, arguing that migration outcomes cannot be explained without examining the interaction between state security imperatives, private actors, and market forces.Accepted manuscrip

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Unsettling State: Non-Citizens, Citizenship and State Power in the United Arab Emirates

This dissertation examines the development and enforcement of citizenship and immigration policies in the United Arab Emirates in order to revisit an enduring puzzle in comparative politics: why are resource-rich states resiliently authoritarian? The dominant explanation for the ‘oil curse’ assumes that authoritarianism emerges because regimes ‘purchase’ the political acquiescence of their citizens by redistributing rents. However, prior to the redistribution of rents comes the much more fundamental question of who will be included in the group of beneficiaries. I argue that oil facilitates the creation of authoritarian power structures because when political elites gain control over fixed assets, they can more effectively erect high barriers to political incorporation. By combining stringent citizenship policies with temporary worker programs, political elites develop their resources while concentrating the redistribution of assets to a very small percentage of the total population. In the UAE, this policy combination has been so effective that non-citizens now comprise 96 percent of the domestic labor force. The boundaries of the UAE’s citizenry became increasingly stringent as oil production was converted into revenue in the 1960s. Since oil reserves are unevenly distributed across the emirates, the political elites who signed concessions with successful oil prospectors have since monopolized control over the composition of the citizenry. As a result, domestic minorities who were previously incorporated by smaller emirates who did not discover oil have since been excluded from the citizenry. The enforcement of stringent citizenship and temporary worker policies led to the growth of an extensive security apparatus. This apparatus prevents the formation of horizontal ties by seeding out political dissidence and labor strikes through the deportation or denaturalization of agitators. The vast majority of the population is now not necessarily temporary, but permanently deportable