4 - Multiple Citizenship by Investment

Summary

Increasingly many do states grant citizenship upon investment. States that standardly require renunciation of previous citizenship upon naturalization tend especially to waive this requirement for investors, thereby allowing investors but not other individuals to become dual citizens. In truth, investor citizenship allows people virtually to ‘buy’ citizenship. Citizenship was not the first status historically to be put on the market, however. In this chapter, I put forward arguments against multiple citizenship-by-investment drawing on the analogy between the sale of citizenship and that of noble titles. I explore the historical objections to the sale of honours and show how similar ones can be raised against investor dual citizenship as well. The aim of the chapter’s central analogy is merely to reveal the ways in which markets undermine values that commonly are (and arguably ideally should be) associated with both systems of citizenship and systems of honours. Through this analogy, this chapter offers a broader than usual account of citizenship, bridging normative and historical perspectives on the topic.