The 'Streetlight Effect' in Commentary on Citizenship by Investment

Abstract

In this chapter I examine recent scholarship on the sale of citizenship. Specifically, I discuss Ana Tanasoca’s historical sensitivity to the sale of citizenship, Luca Mavelli’s Foucauldian account of commodification, and Desiree Lim’s account of expressive discrimination. As with any nuanced political inquiry, there are conceptual, ethical and empirical choices that inform such commentary. In making epistemic choices, an empirical claim may well be premised on an implicit ethical argument, a normative argument may be made by selectively picking a certain sort of empirical inquiry, or one among several conceptualisations of a concept may be passed off as the only one. There is therefore the possibility of a ‘streetlight effect’ where the confines of an inquiry are conducted within an already illuminated patch. I show that this phenomenon applies to the scholarly works discussed in this chapter: Commentary on the sale of citizenship is illuminated by a priority for the claims of community on ‘Who Belongs’ over the claims of access on ‘Who Should Get In’. There is a discursive confounding of ethical, conceptual and empirical claims operating under the streetlight of a presupposition that the claims of a pre-existing national community should determine the claims of access. The chapter is divided into three parts: (1) First, I elaborate on what I mean by a priority of claims of community over claims of access. To do so, I reconstruct a celebrated debate between Joseph Carens and David Miller, and show a continuity in the argumentative strategies employed in general criticisms of open borders and specific criticisms of the sale of citizenship; (2) Second, I provide a brief account of the phenomenon of investment migration, including the sale of citizenship and residency, in order to appreciate specific criticisms of the sale of citizenship; and (3) Third, I reconstruct recent scholarly work on investment migration, and show that a general disposition towards divining the preferences of a pre-existing national community and attributing moral weight to such preferences illuminates specific criticisms of the sale of citizenship. At stake is not only good argumentative practice. Critical commentary on investment migration influences both public discourse and official documents. Without specific findings on how and in what form the sale of citizenship is problematic, a general indictment of the phenomenon has the expressive effect of adding to the exclusionary sentiment that is a defining feature of contemporary public life.