Neo-Ethnicisation of Citizenship: The EU’s Internal and External Governance of Citizenship by Investment

Abstract The European Union’s opposition to citizenship by investment (CBI) programmes is well-documented, targeting both Member States – most notably Malta – and third countries in the Caribbean and Pacific regions. The EU has pressured states to curtail CBI schemes, citing security concerns among other reasons. Recently, the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated Malta’s CBI programme, ruling that commodification cannot constitute a link of solidarity between a Member State and a future citizen. This article argues that a key yet often implicit consequence of such interventions is the preservation of conceptions of bloodline-based and ethnonational citizenship. While resonating with Joppke’s concept of the ‘ethnicisation’ of citizenship, this article departs from his binary de-/re-ethnicisation framework by introducing ‘neo-ethnicisation’ – not a rupture but an adaptive process persisting through transformation. What appears as movement away from ethnic logic may actually represent its reconfiguration through ostensibly neutral legal-political processes, discursive mechanisms and postcolonial governance logics. In former colonies these interventions – entrenched in structural mechanisms rather than explicit policies – limit mobility for ethnoracialised populations and constrain small states’ capacity to deploy citizenship as economic sovereignty. Within the EU, opposition to CBI programmes similarly reflects anxieties over the erosion of the ethnocultural ties traditionally defining national membership, though operating through more complex institutional and discursive dynamics.