Comrades Estranged: Labor and Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century Persian Gulf

In 1975, Kuwaiti workers orchestrated arguably the most powerful citizen-led movement for noncitizen rights in the history of the Persian Gulf.Their efforts built on decades of wide-ranging struggle over the meanings and outlines of citizenship.During the twentieth century, anticolonial nationalists, pro-democracy reformers, feminists, and labor organizers joined forces to fight for a more equitable citizenship regime.In so doing, they won a remarkable series of victories: political independence, constitutional rights, and oil nationalization, reshaping not just Kuwait, but the global petroleum order. Comrades Estranged reframes the history of labor activism, citizenship, and decolonization in Persian Gulf by centering the history of social movements-especially organized labor.Alex Boodrookas traces how workers and their allies shaped the world-historic transformations witnessed across the region: the consolidation of British sovereignty, formation of autocratic states, inrush of hydro