Citizenship as Sovereign Wealth: Re‐thinking Investor Immigration
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| Author | Ashby Monk,Chris Kutarna,Alan Gamlen |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12723 |
Citizenship as Sovereign Wealth: Re-thinking
Investor Immigration
Alan Gamlen
Monash University
Chris Kutarna
University of Oxford
Ashby Monk
Stanford University
Abstract
Selling membership into society has taken on new life with the recent proliferation globally of Immigrant Investor Programs
(IIPs). IIPs involve the sale of national membership privileges to wealthy foreigners, justified by their purported ability to stimu-
late economic development and attract engaged investor-migrants. This paper surveys IIP objectives, activities and perfor-
mance. We argue that IIP success may depend upon the coming-together of expertise from two domains –migration policy
and investment management, and that the latter may offer a means of legitimizing the former. Drawing some insights from
the emerging community of Sovereign Development Funds (SDFs), we propose a set of principles that could guide the emer-
gence of a new type of SDF: Immigrant Investment Funds (IIFs).
Policy Implications
•‘Destination appeal’is an important form of sovereign wealth that can be converted into human and financial capital. But
governments often manage this resource haphazardly.
•Immigrant investor programs, to deliver on their policy objectives, should marry migration policy expertise with sovereign
fund management expertise.
•Well-designed and well-run Immigrant Investment Funds (IIFs) may demonstrate the value of investment-based immigra-
tion to a skeptical public.
•The principles of sound IIF management are already being developed—within the community of Sovereign Development
Fund practitioners. These principles could be ported over to immigrant investor programs.
Citizenship for sale
The idea of selling membership into society is not new. In
France, noble titles were sold in the 16th century to finance
development objectives such as expanding the technical
capacity of the state. This practice was reviled by some aris-
tocrats who feared that the sale of nobility, as a form of
public office, amounted to corruption (Lucas, 1973). These
protests are echoed today in concerns over the rise of Immi-
grant Investor Programs (IIPs), which involve the sale of
national memberships to wealthy foreigners. As in the past,
these organizations were often used to finance develop-
ment objectives. And there remains concern among elites
that civic virtues are debased whenever governments offer
‘citizenships for sale’.
IIPs take various forms but essentially represent an
exchange of residency or citizenship rights for financial capi-
tal. These programs are proliferating globally: our research
found 60 different IIPs in 57 countries, half of them set up
since the year 2000. These programs allow governments to
convert the appeal of their country into financial wealth for
economic development. At the same time, they recognize
immigrants as members of the sovereign ‘people’of a coun-
try, based neither on traditional rights of birthplace (ius soli),
nor on ancestry (ius sanguinis), nor even on civic participa-
tion (Brubaker, 1999), but instead by virtue of economic
contribution (ius pecuniae,D
zanki
c, 2019). The rise of IIPs
thus presents important conceptual and practical challenges
for theories of citizenship, sovereignty and global policy in
the 21st century (Harrison, 1996).
This paper discusses the rise of IIPs, their objectives, activ-
ities and performance, and suggests how they might be
improved. First, we ask what IIPs are, defining them as pro-
grams to exchange national membership rights for financial
and human capital. We then identify two specific policy
objectives driving the establishment of IIPs: (1) attracting
Global Policy (2019) 10:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12723 ©2019 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 10 . Issue 4 . November 2019 527
Research Article
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