Commercializing Citizenship in Crisis EU: The Case of Immigrant Investor Programmes

Abstract

Immigrant investor programmes (IIPs)aimed at attracting investment in return for residency or citizenship for wealthy foreignershave proliferated in EU Member States in recent years. Such schemes constitute part of a much broader commercialization of citizenship, which has intensified during the crisis. They have been particularly controversial in the EU because they rely for their attractiveness in part on the reality of EU citizenship and the rights of mobility and residence that it entails. The European Commission, among others, has presented them as threat to national citizenship and yet the EU at once champions a 'post-national' citizenship and is arguably culpable in the very commercialization of citizenship of which investor schemes are a stark manifestation. This paper unpacks the tensions in the theory and politics of investor migration in the recent EU context, arguing that they reveal what is termed a 'quadrilemma' at the heart of a multi-level citizenship.

Immigrant investor programmes in the European Union (EU)

“…There are however major discrepancies as to how much investment different programmes require. In their studies, both Džankić (2015) and Parker (2016) noted that financial requirements range from several tens of thousands to ten million euros. Hence on the 'investment obligation' dimension, we can develop a scale of countries requiring: 1) very low investment (below 100,000 euros); 2) low investment (100,0000 euros or more, and below 0.5 million euros); 3) medium investment (0.5 million euros or more, but below 1 million euros); 4) high investment (1 million euros or more, but below 5 million euros); 5) very high investment (over 5 million euros).…”

“…In the typology of IIPs, as noted by Parker (2016), it is essential to reflect on the balance between rights and obligations. Therefore, the ranking on the 'status obligation' dimension needs to reflect two key questions: 1) what obligations does the investor have to obtain citizenship rights?…”

“…The common characteristic of environments in which such programmes emerge is that, with the exception of Cyprus and Malta, they are medium-sized economies in which particular sectors (e.g., real estate) have been particularly affected by the financial crisis and the subsequent European debt crisis (Parker 2016).…”

Response to critics

“…If they start to sell their citizenship in a global market, then the value of this commodity depends entirely on the recognition of the status by other states. Investor citizenship thus epitomizes the over-inclusive side of this trend (Shachar and Bauböck 2014;Dzankic 2015;Parker 2017), but it also has an exclusionary side that is generally ignored by Spiro. One example is when governments restrict access to ius soli or to naturalization for refugees or family members of citizens in order to curb undesired migration inflows.…”

In for a Penny, or: If You Disapprove of Investment Migration, Why Do You Approve of High-Skilled Migration?

“…Scholars have rightly pointed out that these two trends are related through a changing attitude of states to migration, the influence of globalization, and the rise of a mobile transnational elite (Van Fossen 2007;Shachar and Hirschl 2014;Abrahamian 2015;Parker 2017;Džankić 2019). Both are instances of discretionary migration policies: unlike refugees and asylum seekers, or particular cases of family reunification, these are cases where states are assumed to hold the right to select prospective immigrants.…”