Cash-for-Passports and the End of Citizenship

Abstract

Investor citizenship programmes are becoming increasingly commonplace in state practice. What was once the province of outlier Caribbean microstates is gaining traction among more substantial states. Cash-for-passports, as Ayelet Shachar labels the phenomenon, clashes with our received understandings of citizenship as a marker of social solidarity in a Walzerian sense. The emerging market for citizenship literally commodifies the status.But where Shachar sees investor citizenship programmes as a threat to robust citizenship ties, I see them more as a manifestation of citizenship that is already being hollowed out. In the old world, investor citizenship programmes would have been inconceivable.Today, far from inconceivable, they are becoming an accepted element of strategic immigration policy.