This article examines the main institutional developments that have accompanied the economic and political changes in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the past twenty years. In particular, the different agencies of the UAE's Ministry of Interior have taken active roles in responding to the demographic changes and in developing preemptive policing strategies that include community policing, extensive surveillance networks, and increasingly individualized and standardized forms of identification. The paper assesses how that institutional growth has shaped the way the UAE has come to manage its guest worker program over time. It explains how the security apparatus is deployed by the state for managing the criminal and cultural impact of expatriates on the national body politic.
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