What can naturalization and denaturalization orders—as published in Egypt’s Official Gazette—inform us about the experiences of European immigrants in the country, from the belated birth of Egyptian nationality in 1929, until their mass departures in the late 50s and 60s? The historiography tending to “grieve cosmopolitanism” in Egypt has often taken as its point of departure the so-called rise of Arab-Muslim identity in the 1930s, which allegedly sealed the fate of “non-Muslim minorities” in Egypt three decades later. In subscribing to this culturalist narrative, not only are historical and political factors shaping changing state policies ignored, but also, the agency, choices and singular trajectories of European immigrants are discounted.
I use more than three decades of pronouncements by the Egyptian Ministry of Interior, on who may be considered Egyptian and who may not, as well as court cases that dispute the ministry’s decisions, to question established assumptions and to complicate the historiographic and popular narratives. I contextualize what I describe as a process of securitization of nationality within the legacy of colonial governance, hoping thereby to challenge the tendency in the literature to lump post-colonial state and society into a unitary actor moved by sectarian and ethnic identification. The naturalization orders that I examined, although versed using a formal legal template, contain schematic information that gives some insight into the lives of those immigrants who strove to settle in Egypt, even when it seemed to be a choice fraught with inconveniences or difficulties. In this seminar, I will present this ongoing research, to explore: who sought; who was granted; and who was denied Egyptian nationality, in the midst of the waves of European departures from Egypt.
Rim Naguib received her PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University (2016) and her MA from Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence (2006). Her research interests address three related fields: the colonial practice of ideological-ethnic deportation of internationalist foreigners and ‘local subjects of foreign extraction’ in the policing of communism in interwar Egypt; the post-colonial securitisation of Egyptian nationality legislation and practice and of the management of foreigners’ residence; and the political and cultural history of Egyptian patriarchal nationalism. She is currently working on her book manuscript, Undesirable Subjects: Deportation in Colonial and Post-colonial Egypt 1914-1971. In the academic year 2019/20, Rim Naguib was a EUME Fellow and continued her EUME Fellowship in 2020-22 through a stipend by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. From 2022 to 2024, she was a EUME Research Associate at the Forum Transregionale Studien and continues to be a Fellow of EUME from 2024-26 with a scholarship of the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
Esther Möller is the German vice-director of the Franco-German research institute in Humanities and Social Sciences Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin and a visiting professor of history at Humboldt-University Berlin. Her research interests include the history of the the Middle East and North Africa, in particular Lebanon and Egypt, with a focus on education, humanitarian aid and (forced) migration. Among her most recent publications is the article Multiple Mittelmeer-Missionen: Religiöse, wissenschaftliche und humanitäre Begegnungen und Besitznahmen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Multiple Mediterranean Missions. Religious, Scientific and Humanitarian Encounters and Conquests in the 19th and 20th centuries), in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 49/2 (2023).
This seminar is part of the Workshop “Diasporas, Exiles, Migrants, and Refugees from Europe in the Middle East and North Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries”, July 8-10, 2025. Pleaser register in advance via eume(at)trafo-berlin.de.
Depending on approval by the speaker(s), the Berliner Seminar will be recorded. All audio recordings of the Berliner Seminar are available on SoundCloud.