Not Yours to Sell: The Case Against Private Citizenship Markets

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Should it be permissible for individuals to sell their own citizenship? In brief: no. Against recent defenses of the idea of private citizenship markets, I argue that these markets cannot be legitimately established. First, I examine existing arguments in the literature in support of such markets, and argue that they do not present sufficient reasons for justifying the establishment of private citizenship markets. Second, I argue that the very idea of private citizenship markets is a non-starter, as the privatization of citizenship allocation undermines the justification for the collective right to exclude from membership. As a result, the case for private citizenship markets fails. Finally, I consider some possible objections to my argument and potential implications of it beyond the case of private citizenship markets.