Throughout 2018, citizenship has been one of the most ubiquitous topics of political debate in a number of countries. In January the Austrian and the Italian governments entered into a spat over the possibility to offer Austrian citizenship to German and Ladin speaking people living in the region of South Tyrol. In May the United Kingdom government was embroiled in a scandal over the rights of Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK in the period after the Second World War. And in October, the US President Donald Trump said he will try to end the right to U.S. citizenship for babies born in the United States to non-citizens. While being a burning topic in the political discourse, the way countries regulate their membership has remained largely intact. In fact, there have been only a few changes to citizenship legislation between January 2018 and January 2019. We have mapped these reforms. Read More …

In the context of citizenship, ‘refusal’ can have both a state dimension and an individual one. It creates populations whose rights are limited domestically or internationally, either through their own volition or by deliberate state action. While in these cases investor citizenship can indeed serve the instrumental purpose of attributing a status it remains a highly problematic practice. Read More …

On 23 January, the European Commission published its long-awaited Report on Investor Citizenship Schemes. The report is accompanied by a Commission Staff Working Document, which provides definitions of investor residence and citizenship programmes, as well as an overview of policies applicable across the 28 European Union (EU) Member States. On the basis of an empirical study of investor citizenship and residence schemes in the EU, the report calls for due regard of EU law in national citizenship policies, especially regarding the link between residence and physical presence, common standards for security checks, and enhanced oversight of intermediaries involved in acquisition of citizenship and residence by investment. Read More …

The content of citizenship laws can be politically controversial in any country. African states, whose borders were, for the most part, arbitrarily created at the stroke of a pen in Berlin in 1885, have particular challenges. The 1964 decision of the newly formed Organisation of African Unity to respect those borders committed the continent to the task of moulding the colonial units into legitimate political communities. Read More …