Citizenship and Residence Sales
Rethinking the Boundaries of Belonging

The first interdisciplinary empirically-grounded pluri-jurisdictional assessment of the origins, operation and main causes of the growing global investment migration trend.

Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov (Edited by), Kristin Surak (Edited by)

9781108492874, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 April 2023

360 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 3.6 cm, 1 kg

'The prospect of 'selling citizenship' provokes indignation from those who cling to a romantic idea of what citizenship should mean, be or do. The authors of this volume proceed from the reality of what citizenship as legal status actually is and does, and raise important questions about the normative and pragmatic implications for regulating how citizenship is distributed.' Audrey Macklin, University of Toronto

Citizenship and residence by investment is a fast-growing global phenomenon. As of 2022, more than a third of all countries in the world offered paths to membership in exchange for a donation or investment into their economies. Yet we know little about how these programmes operate and debates in academia and the wider public are often misinformed by sensationalist cases. This book offers a multidisciplinary exploration of both citizenship and residence by investment on a global scale. Bringing together the expertise of leading legal scholars, economists, sociologists, political scientists, and historians, it provides an informative and empirically grounded assessment of the origins, operation, key causes, and the legal bases of the investment migration programmes. By so doing, the volume demystifies citizenship and residence by investment and takes a critical postcolonial global perspective, addressing key issues in belonging, exclusion, and inequality that define the world today.

Introduction: learning from investment migration Dimitry Kochenov and Kristin Surak
Part I. Mapping Investment Migration Law and Practice: 1. Investment migration: empirical developments in the field and methodological issues in its study Kristin Surak
2. Victims of citizenship: feudal statuses for sale in the hypocrisy republic Dimitry Kochenov
3. Investort citizenship and state sovereignty in international law Luuk van der Baaren
4. Investment citizenship and the long leash of international law Peter J. Spiro
5. Relevant links: investment migration as an expression of national autonomy in matters of nationality Petra Weingerl and Matjaž Tratnik
6. EU competence and investor migration Daniel Sarmiento and Martijn van den Brink
Part II. Explanations and Contextualizations: 7. Citizenship for sale in pre-modern Europe Maarten Prak
8. Unseemly, perhaps, but…: should citizenship be for sale? John Torpey
9. Citizenship by investment: a case of instrumental citizenship Christian Joppke
10. The colonial institution of citizenship and global capitalist dynamics Manuela Boatc?
11. Citizenship and residence rights as vehicles of global inequality Yossi Harpaz
12. The 'Streetlight Effect' in commentary on citizenship by investment Suryapratim Roy
13. A blocked exchange? Investment citizenship and the limits of the commodification objection Lior Erez
14. Why do wealthy individuals migrate internationally: some economic considerations Andrés Solimano
Part III. Case Studies and Implications: 15. Can investor residence and citizenship programmes be a policy success? Madeleine Sumption
16. Citizenship revocation and the normalisation of ex-post conditionality in investment migration law Daniel Christopher Twomey
17. In the shadow of the Euro crisis: foreign direct investment and investment migration programmes in the European Union Justin Lindeboom and Sophie Meunier
18. Investment migration and corruption: state capture and the Hungarian residency bond program 2012–2017 Boldizsár Nagy
19. Investment migration and the importance of due diligence: examples of Canada, Saint-Kitts and Nevis, and the EU Mark Corrado and Kim Marsh
20. Investment migration and subnational jurisdictions Godfrey Baldacchino and Elena Basheska.

Subject Areas: Regional & area planning [RP], Geography [RG], Earth sciences, geography, environment, planning [R]