Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in the Middle East and North Africa. By Laurie A. Brand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 264p. $85.00.

This book charts new territory by taking emigration, and the policies of sending states toward their citizens abroad, seriously. Laurie Brand's comparative examination of state emigration institutions and policy across Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan places her in an excellent position both to critique and to contribute to literatures on transnationalism and citizenship that are myopically focused on immigration to the North and host country policies toward migrants. Most intriguingly, early research led Brand to frame her investigation in terms of broader questions about the contemporary reconfiguration of “sovereignty in the international system” by home states in response not only to host state actions but also to the changing demands, material resources, and experiences of émigré communities (pp. 10–11, 222).