From Passport to Pennies: Theorizing the Effects of Dual Citizenship on Migrant Remittances

Abstract

Migrant remittances are critical elements of the economic development agenda in many parts of the world. Extending dual citizenship to emigrants has been suggested as government policy to encourage and stabilize migrants’ financial transfers. This essay theorizes the causal relationship between passports and pennies, or between citizenship policies and transnational economic activities, such as remittances. It reads the conceptualizations from a grounded theory study on the effects of status passages related to citizenship, as well as findings from economic sociology into the micro-economic literature on the determinants of remittances. Based on a study of India’s diasporic membership status, the Overseas Citizenship of India, the essay shows that four principal effects—the rights, identity, naturalization and good-will effect—affect various populations differently. The conceptualizations serve to generate empirically grounded hypotheses about the relationship between economic transfers and citizenship status, as well as to understand the underlying (and sometimes competing) mechanisms.