Abstract
The UAE and Qatar have been consciously constructed as specialised geographic zones for the global elite and transnational capitalism. Never undergoing a historic bourgeois democratic period and lacking citizenship rights for the large majority of their residents, the UAE and Qatar are not modern nation states. Nevertheless, the Gulf aristocracy is fully integrated into global flows of accumulation. They have adapted their societies at every level – finance, culture, leisure, education, legal structures and labour relations – to create a unique crossroads for globalisation.
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