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How have states made citizens of international migrants? Scholarship on this matter has typically centered on cases in which a strong state in the core of the world system makes nationals of people within its territorial borders, be they autochthonous communities or immigrants. From this perspective, making citizens is a domestic process in which migrant sending countries play a negligible role because of their subordinate position in the international state system. A neglected pattern is one in which more than one state is directly implicated in the making of nationals. This configuration becomes apparent when two or more states have relatively symmetrical power relations and are joined by migration flows. Analytically, this entails an explicitly cross-national and long term stance. Drawing on an examination of the migration system constituted by two quintessential countries of emigration (Italy and Spain), and a traditional country of immigrants (Argentina) over a 150 year period, this essay argues that these countries have made citizens in a context of competition over the same people. To makes citizens in a competitive political field it has not been enough to rely on the integrating effect of structural/diffuse nationalizing processes, but has required explicit legal and organizational projects. The findings and approach of this paper extend a political sociology of mobility and membership by reassessing the common wisdom about the making of nationals by strong core states and especially by bringing into its purview sending and receiving state actors over time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]