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

ABSTRACT This 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.