Paper short abstract:

Through fieldwork on the golden passports industry, I suggest that buying citizenship is the continuation of offshoring by other means. The paper associates citizenship with property both conceptually and ethnographically, to scrutinize a trend reshaping the world of capital today.

Paper long abstract:

This paper suggests that the naturalisation of foreign investors, a scheme known as "global citizenship", is a salient formation of contemporary offshoring. I argue that offshored capital has a local face and a national passport, apart from a global "logic". Like any offshoring process, "global citizenship" is removed from two tiers of empirical realities: the first relates to the country through in which it is established, in this case Cyprus; the second concerns the historical empirics of citizenship. Based on fieldwork with the gate-keeping middlepersons who facilitate golden passports in Cyprus, the paper fills these two empirical gaps, suggesting the conceptual complexity of citizenship by investment programmes, as they interlock domestic and global practices.

Cyprus, an erstwhile long-standing offshore centre, and a country suffering a 45-year division, is locked in a nexus of difficult citizenship politics, which this scheme complicates even further. The paper analyses the domestic complications of a global Republic, seeing its global citizenship dream as the continuation of offshoring by other means. Furthermore, the paper argues that golden passports offer a vantage point to reestablish citizenship, both conceptually and politically, as a phenomenon based on property and elite mobility. The ethics of buying and offshoring citizenship are rooted in the international politics of class, as well as in a long tradition of the citizenry as an ensemble of property-owners.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the development of a specifically Gibraltarian British citizenship over the course of a century. Gibraltarians moved from being Spanish speaking subject to an Imperial Crown though a process of mimesis to becoming 'more British than the British'.

Paper long abstract:

In the beginning of the 20th century Gibraltarians were overwhelmingly Spanish speaking and part of a local society and economy that traversed an international border. By century's end Gibraltarians were increasingly monolingual in English and identified very strongly - even intensely—with British culture and values to the point that it is often claimed, by Gibraltarians themselves, that they are 'more British than the British'. The paper explores this extraordinary transformation in citizenship and sensibility, focusing on the quotidian articulations of citizenship and belonging as well as the ever-changing notions of 'Britishness'.

This paper is based on the ESRC funded Bordering on Britishness project which collected almost 400 interviews and in depth surveys of people on both sides of the Gibraltarian/Spanish border looking at the ways in which identity has changed over time. I look at this instance of 'offshore citizenship' and how it has developed but also raise the question of how Brexit will affect Gibraltarians' notion of citizenship. Despite voting overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU, Gibraltarians lost their EU citizenship on the 31st of January. Perhaps more significantly, if less commented upon, is the effect on Gibraltarians of Britishness and belonging undergoing radical change. What is a Gibraltarian British citizenship when 'Britishness' is transformed and the inclusion of key elements such as Northern Ireland and Scotland is placed in doubt? Finally, the paper explores what a post Brexit Gibraltarian Britishness could look like.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the various local reactions to Malta's selling of citizenship rights to international elites exposes long-standing alliances between the working classes and capital, and the role of class in structuring and understanding citizenship and nationality.

Paper long abstract:

While Europe suffers austerity, Malta has experienced an unprecedented economic boom. Capitalising on Malta's marginality, the reigning Labour Party has used various schemes to attract foreign capital, including the accommodation of shady "gaming companies" and the commodification of Maltese citizenship (and EU) to international elites. Malta's civil society - largely composed of young professionals educated abroad - has campaigned hard against such schemes, both in Malta and increasingly in Europe. But many Maltese have not rallied to their banner. The masses, civil society argues, are still obsessed with their well-documented "game of thrones" of local party politics. Accordingly, they cannot see "the white walkers" making a mockery of nationality and jeopardising Malta's status as a democratic, European nation.

Studying the trajectory of two pro-government families, this paper reveals a long alliance between the working classes and foreign elites. Unlike "civil society", which ruins Malta's reputation abroad, "white walkers" have reproduced barren Malta as a hub of global trade, providing wealth that stops the upwardly mobile from having to seek fortunes abroad. Moreover, unlike their cosmopolitan protesters - whose fates, prestige and conceptions of identity are tied to the European project - they reject the idea that "Malteseness" can be reduced to law and governance. Being a Maltese citizen does not make one Maltese, surely? Rather than morally and ontologically compromising them, therefore, they see the selling of citizenship rights as a viable (and ingenious) way of generating raw cash and attracting foreign investors.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses how Chileans of Italian descent use the Italian citizenship they "inherit" from their ancestors, what it means to them and the mobility it engenders. It then compares it with European migration policies and with the representations of European identity and borders.

Paper long abstract:

Building on an ethnographic research I carried out in Santiago de Chile and in Trentino (Italy) with Chileans of Italian descent, this paper analyses how they use the Italian citizenship they "inherit" from their ancestors, what it means to them and the mobility it engenders. In a second phase, the paper compares these practices to Italian and European migration policies. Thanks to the principle of jus sanguinis, Italian law allows emigrants' descendants to maintain or acquire citizenship without generation limits. In addition, regional return programmes support candidates to "homecoming": these two legal measures generate massive immigration in Italy. This paper shows that emigrants' descendants conceive Italian citizenship as an asset giving access to a wide range of opportunities at the European level (professional, training, mobility and medical care opportunities inside the Schengen space). But if Italian citizenship has a strong legal meaning, it has a low cultural intensity. It does not evoke a cultural community with which the respondents identify: they conceive themselves as Chilean nationals. The separation between citizenship, nationality and belonging, which I observed, contrasts with the rhetoric of the Italian policies, assimilating citizenship and identity. To conclude, I argue that the creation of new Italian citizens through jus sanguinis, introduces a value gap between the right to return and the right to enter the European Union, fostering "chosen immigration" as a counterpoint to the European immigration policy of closed borders. This brings me to question the representations of European identity and borders in delocalized societies.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I focus on issues of multiple nationality and overseas citizenship among the descendants of Lebanese immigrants to Argentina. It covers from processes of integration to campaigns carried out by the Maronite to encourage descendents to reclaim their Lebanese citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on fieldwork in Argentina among the descendants of immigrants coming at the beginning of the xx century from the Levant. In this paper I focus on issues of multiple nationality and overseas citizenship among the descendants of Lebanese immigrants to Argentina from the early xx century. It covers from processes of integration to campaigns carried out by the Maronite to encourage descendents to reclaim their Lebanese citizenship. Through this paper I show the multiple and contrasting motivations of the would be citizens, with those of the Maronite Church on behalf of the Lebanese state. I show that while for the former, acquiring citizenship is seen as an expression of emotional attachment, filial duty, and nationalism rather than a pragmatic act towards securing inheritance or future migration and settlement. Meanwhile for the latter, it is a matter of influencing Lebanese demographics in view of a future census that might change the confessional division of power.

Paper short abstract:

This paper conceptualises offshore citizenship as a form of "market citizenship", contingent on crisis. This re-definition of citizenship lays bare the inherent class and race bias of a global regime of mobility, while offering an opportunity to re-define citizenship as a democratic project.

Paper long abstract:

"Citizenship-by-investment" has become a fixture of many southern European countries, leading to the proliferation of an "offshore citizenship". This paper conceptualises this development as part of a process of "accumulation through dispossession" (Harvey 2003) of the social realm, a neoliberal phenomenon accelerating since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008. Offshore citizenship enabling mobility is thus viewed as co-constitutive of regimes of austerity generative of immobilised subjectivities - both legal citizens and non-citizens - enduring conditions of existential "stuckedness" (Hage 2009). Building on this premise, the concept is seen in conjunction with the gradual entrenchment of a "consumer" (2008) or "market citizenship" (Streeck 2012), whereby the original idea of (legal) citizenship facilitating access to democratic and social rights is substituted by equal access to market consumption, in this case, commodified mobility.

Viewed from this perspective, offshore citizenship does not constitute an aberration, but rather an attempt at institutionalising the global phenomenon of "expats" (Kunz 2016), conceived as primarily skilled and white, and possessing "the class consciousness of frequent travellers" (Calhoun 2008). Legal citizenship in the broader sense (including statuses such as "refugee" or "subsidiary protection") is being transformed as an instrument policing a global "regime of mobility" (Glick-Schiller and Salazar 2013; Rygiel 2010), where race functions as a prime organising principle. Based on evidence and ethnographic snapshots from Cyprus, this paper argues that "offshore citizenship" as market citizenship offers an opportunity of re-signifying the concept of citizenship as an inclusive "institution in flux" (Isin 2009) based on solidarity.

Paper short abstract:

A lack of border crossing mobility for holders of weak passports, influences their ability to maintain middle-class status, creating a desire for obtaining "second passports". The lack of funds hinders outright purchase of passports, and the paper examines the in-between solutions.

Paper long abstract:

Expatriate workers live precariously in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Temporary residential

permits tied up to employment status ensure that any expatriate must live

with the knowledge of potentially leaving on short notice. During the

beginning of the current blockade of Qatar, Egyptian expats explored potential

strategies to secure their futures as they felt caught between states

after Egypt cut all diplomatic ties to Qatar. As they hold weak passports they find their middle-class lifestyle place bound in Qatar, and are looking for ways to ensure their ability to maintain their status. Through engaging with their

desires for second passports, the paper explores the ways middle class

Egyptians view increased access to border-crossing mobility as securing

their futures.

Focusing on middle class Egyptian expatriate workers in the Arab Gulf

makes for an interesting lens into how privilege is constructed.

Economically they are part of a global middle class but as holders of

"weak passports" they are hindered from a type of easy mobility often

associated with the term "expat". Although they are middle class, they do not have access to the money required to right out "purchase" a new passport, and so they resort to in-between solutions such as investor residencies, or juggling multiple visas. This paper maps out the complex

structure of privilege constructed between economy, citizenship and

borders in the Arab Gulf.

Paper short abstract:

The last cases of the European Court of Justice reveal how deep its decisions reshaped national citizenship for the sake of human rights. I will explain how the ECJ narrowed the role of the EU Member States to protect their national citizenship from foreigners seeking for new citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

In many situations, the judgments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) have been seen as an intervention in the national law of Member States of the European Union. The last cases of the European Court of Justice (Rottmann, Micheletti, Chen, Tjebbes) reveal how deep its decisions reshaped national citizenship for the sake of human rights.

I will explain how the ECJ narrowed the role of the EU Member States to protect their national citizenship from foreigners seeking for new citizenship.

In this respect, I will consider the relevant cases solved by the ECJ concerning the rights of non-European individuals who obtained EU Member States citizenship by marriage or due to their children born in the hosting EU Member States. Methodologically, I intent to show which decisions changed eventually the core of national sovereignty by imposing procedural requirements in obtaining national citizenship in accordance with the human rights and Internal Market principles.

Cases selected in my presentation will lead to the conclusion that by its judgments the ECJ has increased the opportunities for non-European individuals to acquire an EU Member State citizenship. Finally, I indent a debate on the solutions needed to protect EU citizenship to become offshore citizenship for the sake of human rights and Internal Market principles.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore new forms of citizenship of people who challenge the state system through a case study of Rohingya refugees resettling in Bangladesh camps. The study will look at their journey of survival through making fake citizenship documents like passports to building new kinship ties.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to unveil the exclusion, self-resilience and counter resistance of Rohingya refugees surviving in camps of Bangladesh, devoid of citizenship status and fleeing persecution in Myanmar. The root of this problem although had emanated as a post-colonial fallout spanned between the murky borders of Myanmar-Bangladesh-India, but is now a widely discussed global and transnational phenomenon. My fieldworks in Bangladesh Rohingya camps in 2015 and 2019 show the transitional definitions of contemporary notions of citizenship which largely is shaped by inflow of global capital and market. This study shows how through the production of new and changing social relations, the Rohingya refugees are able to challenge the classical understanding of citizenship. At times using 'nomadic tactics' to transgress violence, they lie somewhere at the 'vanishing points' of state margins where 'techniques, identities, practices, and power relations' are used to regulate and confine flows. The refugees are products of politics inside sovereign states and their 'statelessness', a part of the dynamics of border politics. In this kind of a survival, precarity becomes the new normal, when everyday hardship is marked by waiting, and hopes to gain access to new forms of citizenship rights in order to evade socio-economic vulnerabilities and political stamping out.

Is there any way forward? How do the Rohingyas perceive themselves in this context? Do they consider themselves as stateless, more precisely non-citizens or, on the contrary as global citizens? These are some of the vantage points that the paper seeks to address.

Paper short abstract:

Paradoxical, paratheatrical, parapolitical -- the multifacted inflections of the prefix para serves as the point of departure for this paper, which examines how a participatory art game design enabled a form of "parapolitics" to occur on a former steelworks site in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

Paper long abstract:

Paramilitary, paramedic, parafiction, parapolitics -- the multifacted inflections of the prefix para serves as the point of departure for this paper, which examines how a participatory art game design enabled a form of "parapolitics" to occur on a former steelworks site in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. In my paper, I draw upon my ethnographic experience as a game player, literature in political science on citizenship, as well as the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Ranciere, to argue that the game design generated a distinct "playing space" with temporal and spatial confines that was nonetheless continually breached through the act of playing. This paradox of the paratheatrical (Wilshire) within the game enabled another form of urban citizenship to be practiced by players—an alternative polis so to speak, beside or beyond that of the state—that challenged normative approaches to the urban development of the site. Drawing upon Arendt, I show how this alternative polis was constructed through forms of trust and contract via a visible and verbal accounting to one another, a form of accountability and mode of governance irreducible and distinct from Foucauldian notions of the biopolitical or bureaucratic oversight through which the state often exercises forms of control. As such, this paper offers a provocative angle to the discussion of offshore citizenship within Europe, showing how marginal zones might be generated not merely at its borders but also within leftover, devalued space in the heart of Europe.