抄録
The purpose of this article is to clarify the transition in "nation-building" in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through the process of state building and development. The rapid development of the UAE led to the severe problem of demographic imbalance between the UAE nationals and expatriates. This situation has had quite an impact on various fields such as politics, economics, and society. In particular, the transformation of the national identity, as a result of the developmental and demographic imbalance, has become a crucial issue with respect to the very foundation of the nation's existence. In order to highlight the nation-building process in the UAE, I will first attempt to construct the blueprint of the state-building process and will demonstrate how the state attempted to build its own "nation" in the UAE. Second, I will review the nationality law to examine the institutional side of nation-building. Third, I will examine the process of government-led development in order to determine the cause of the demographic imbalance. Fourth, I will focus on the Marriage Fund program as a case study to demonstrate the state's attempt to safeguard the UAE nationals. The Marriage Fund program is one of the characteristic policies that were established in the Shaikh Zayed era; accordingly, we can assume that the state strives to protect the ideal Emiratis. In the activities pertaining to the Marriage Fund, the Arab/Islamic logic is used to encourage marriages between nationals to maintain families that form the foundation of the state.
