Public event on Wednesday 9th November at 6pm in LG16 (Laud) at Canterbury Christ Church University

The spread of the global economic crisis enticed many countries to consider attracting investors to become their citizens. The mushrooming of investor programs, which permit rich individuals to gain residence in the underlying countries and eventually access their citizenship, has become a mechanism of securing an infusion of capital into the struggling economies. The lecture will first look at the relationship between the notion of citizenship and the different types of preferential naturalization of investors: naturalization through residence, discretionary naturalization, and detailed investor citizenship programs. In order to examine whether the economic utility of the investment to the state can suffice to override some or all other criteria for naturalization, we will explore legal and normative dimensions of the notion of “genuine ties” questioning whether preferential treatment of investors can be justified as merit or talent. In the second part of the lecture, the focus will be on classifying investment-based citizenship and residence programs in all the 28 European Union (EU) Member States, and on discussing the implications of investor citizenship and residence programs on the notion of EU citizenship.

Dr Jelena Dzankic currently coordinates the European Citizenship Observatory (EUDO) at the European University Institute in Florence. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and before moving to Florence has worked as a research fellow in the CITSEE (Citizenship in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia) project at the University of Edinburgh. Her book titled “Citizenship in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro” was published with Ashgate in 2015. She is currently working on an edited volume titled “The Europeanization of the Western Balkans” forthcoming with Palgrave MacMillian in 2017 (with Marko Kmezic and Soeren Keil). She has worked as an adviser to the European Commission and numerous NGOs including Freedom House.