Citizenship is often imagined as a gateway to rights, recognition, and belonging. But what happens when citizenship itself becomes a mechanism of dispossession?

In her public lecture, award-winning sociologist Areej Sabbagh-Khoury explores the paradox of citizenship in settler-colonial contexts. Focusing on Palestinian citizens in Israel – especially those internally displaced yet denied return to their original homes – she examines how citizenship can grant formal rights while reinforcing dispossession of land, resources, and political power. At the same time, the talk highlights how Palestinian citizens of Israel have used citizenship itself as a tool of political struggle, challenging inequality and reclaiming collective history.

Iftar dinner will be provided. This event is sponsored and funded by UO’s Global Justice Program.

Sabbagh-Khoury is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research interests include political and historical sociology, settler colonialism, indigenous studies, and memory. She is the author of the award-winning monograph Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba (Stanford University Press, 2023), a pioneering sociological study of settler colonialism in Palestine.

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