In Impossible Citizens, Neha Vora draws on her ethnographic research in Dubai's Indian-dominated downtown to explore how Indians live suspended in a state of permanent temporariness.

Indian communities have existed in the Gulf emirate of Dubai for more than a century. Since the 1970s, workers from South Asia have flooded into the emirate, enabling Dubai's huge construction boom. They now compose its largest noncitizen population. Though many migrant families are middle-class and second-, third-, or even fourth-generation residents, Indians cannot become legal citizens of the United Arab Emirates. Instead, they are all classified as temporary guest workers. In Impossible Citizens, Neha Vora draws on her ethnographic research in Dubai's Indian-dominated downtown to explore how Indians live suspended in a state of permanent temporariness.

While their legal status defines them as perpetual outsiders, Indians are integral to the Emirati nation-state and its economy. At the same time, Indians—even those who have established thriving diasporic neighborhoods in the emirate—disavow any interest in formally belonging to Dubai and instead consider India their home. Vora shows how these multiple and conflicting logics of citizenship and belonging contribute to new understandings of contemporary citizenship, migration, and national identity, ones that differ from liberal democratic models and that highlight how Indians, rather than Emiratis, are the quintessential—yet impossible—citizens of Dubai.

"“Vora’s book is not merely an interesting narrative; it is also theoretically sophisticated, working through the Dubai case to argue an urgent need for questioning several core analytic concepts… she confidently ranges around questions of citizenship, migrancy and governmentality – including taxation and welfare – and deftly demonstrates how academic and popular discourse alike fail to disengage from the ‘imperial genealogies’ of their own epistemologies… Accordingly, this book deserves a readership beyond its obvious regional constituencies. Anyone thinking about state, citizenship, migration, rights or contemporary economies, or about the intellectual and political work that we do when we delineate and separate analytic domains, prising them from the flow of daily reactions and transactions that form social life, will find much here.”­" - Times Higher Education

"“Impossible Citizens is immediately engaging and sophisticated in its presentation of the myriad realities of the everyday lives of Indians in Dubai. . . . [T]he promise of the book is not just for those identifying with Area Studies or readers interested in Diaspora Studies and research on transnational ties that link South Asia with the other parts of the world, but also for those who wish to engage with thematic subjects of citizenship, migration and its links to ‘home’ economies and an anthropology of how neo-liberal economics affects the spatial, sensual and social architecture of cities.”" - South Asia

". . . a rich and comprehensive ethnography of Dubai’s Indian community that sets new standards for writing about 'guest workers' in the Gulf…. Impossible Citizens examines citizenship 'precisely through those who mark citizenship’s limits' — and in so doing, provides a compelling analysis of political governance that speaks to multiple disciplines and regions of the world.” - Middle East Journal

"“[Vora’s] careful study of a group of migrants makes a compelling contribution to the anthropology of migration, transnationalism, and cities as well as to area studies of South Asia and the Middle East.”" - Journal of Anthropological Research

" "A rich ethnography which provides a fresh perspective on the Indian community in the rapidly changing city of Dubai."  " - International Migration Review

"Impossible Citizens will no doubt appeal to anyone interested in the Southasian diaspora and in new forms of citizenship." - Himal Southasian Magazine

"...this book is a remarkable study in the field of Gulf Studies, migration, diaspora, and citizenship. It challenges these concepts with the exceptional case of Dubai.... Her painstaking research has resulted in an extraordinary and extremely well documented contribution. The book is well organized and well written. It will be welcomed by students, professionals, and academics alike." - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"[W]ith Impossible Citizens, Vora—through her rich ethnographic work and her very well laid out arguments—contributes significantly to our understanding of citizenship, diaspora and belonging by introducing the largely understudied, highly multicultural yet stratified society of Dubai." - The Australian Journal of Anthropology