The recent growth of the investment migration industry is closely linked to the inequality in the rights and obligations linked to different citizenships. In a world where inequalities are spatialised, the space where one is allowed to live is the most significant determinant of prosperity, education, safety and economic success. Citizenships are keys to spaces and thus the core tool of global inequalities today: a personal legal status that opens some spaces while rendering other borders impenetrable. In the absolute majority of cases, citizenship is ascribed at birth and is never changed—global inequalities are thus mainly based on blood: the aristocracy principle. Your pedigree determines whether you will be allowed to access the spaces of opportunity. This distribution of vital resources, life chances and rights is in direct opposition to the foundational values of all liberal democratic constitutions today, but remains the sole principle known to the global system of citizenship and migration law, which persecute the ‘low born’, who are usually not white. The discrepancy between different citizenship statuses is significantly reinforced by the phenomenon of intercitizenships, which consists of the mutual co-extension of citizenship rights by the states that issue the best citizenships in the world. A Norwegian citizen has full residence rights in forty destinations, including some of the richest states in the world, while a Comorian has no residence rights in any state other than his home country. The status assigned to you at birth either makes you a victim of low-quality citizenship or, for the lucky few, part of the global aristocracy. We argue that the phenomenon of investment migration is directly linked to the profound discrepancy between the global aristocracy and the victims of citizenship: without these victims, there would be no citizenship-by-investment.
Kochenov et al. (2026) studied this question.