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Citizenship for the Future: Building Sahrawi Citizenship and Making Territory From Exile

APLA Newsletter

Published online on

Abstract

["PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Volume 49, Issue 1, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis article uses the framework of prefigurative citizenship to show how Sahrawi refugees have worked to build a sense of hope and possibility while displaced. Prefigurative citizenship is both made and mobilized in relation to a vision that rewrites current connections between a state, a territory, and a people to reposition Sahrawi refugees while building decolonized futures. This article explores how Western Sahara's territorial qualities and natural resource wealth inform the making of a prefigurative Sahrawi citizenship through affective ties to the territory. These configurations of Sahrawi place and property in Western Sahara form the basis for building a future that challenges dispossessive social orders of the contemporary, creating the landscape for political actions and claims‐making in the present.\n"]