Ancestry into Opportunity: How Global Inequality Drives Demand for Long-distance European Union Citizenship
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Harpaz, Ancestry into Opportunity, Preprint
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Ancestry into Opportunity:
How Global Inequality Drives Demand for Long-Distance EU
Citizenship
YossiHarpaz,PrincetonUniversity
yharpaz@princeton.edu
***Preprintversion
***PaperwaspublishedintheJournalofEthnicandMigrationStudies,2015–please
refertopublishedversionwhenciting
Reference:
Harpaz,Yossi.2015.“AncestryintoOpportunity:HowGlobalInequalityDrivesDemand
forLong-DistanceEUCitizenship”.JournalofEthnicandMigrationStudies41(13),2081-
2104.
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Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between global inequality and dual citizenship by analyzing
citizenship acquisition from abroad in the European Union. Most EU countries now offer facilitated
naturalization to descendants of emigrants and co-ethnics abroad, which requires neither residence nor
renunciation of former citizenship. Since the 1990’s, over 3.5 million people have used this opening to
obtain dual citizenship from a European country to which they often have little if any connection. I
analyze this phenomenon using a dataset that I constructed from previously-unanalyzed administrative
statistics. The data were used to test an original theory that explains patterns of demand for dual
citizenship in the context of a global hierarchy of citizenship worth. The analysis demonstrated that
demand was much higher in Latin America and Eastern Europe than in North America and Western
Europe. Non-Western Applicants were drawn to the practical benefits of EU citizenship, and their level of
demand varied in response to economic conditions like unemployment. In contrast, Western applicants
displayed lower demand for citizenship and were unresponsive to economic incentives. The paper
contributes to the literature by demonstrating the relationship between citizenship and global stratification
as well as highlighting a widespread instrumental approach to dual citizenship.
Keywords: citizenship; globalization; transnationalism; migration; European Union
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Introduction
The institution of citizenship is the cornerstone of the modern nation-state: it not only
defines who belongs in the national community but also sets the terms of that inclusion.1
Recognizing this key role, the sociological literature has dealt extensively with citizenship
acquisition by immigrants in Europe and North America, investigating the incentives that drive
foreigners to become nationals and the causes and consequences of their inclusion. This literature
has generally neglected, however, another large group of new citizens in European countries:
descendants of emigrants and co-ethnics who obtain citizenship from abroad. Eighteen member
states of the European Union now offer facilitated naturalization on the basis of ancestry or
ethnicity, requiring neither residence nor renunciation of former citizenship (Dumbrava 2014).
Thanks to these “reacquisition” programs, since 1991 over 3.5 million people obtained dual
citizenship from EU countries, including Italy, Germany, Spain, Hungary and Romania.2
What are the forces that drive so many people to obtain passports from countries where
they do not reside, and to which they often have little connection? The literature on non-resident
citizenship mostly focused on the “supply” side, seeking to explain why states offer rights to
people outside their territory. Far less attention has been accorded to the “demand” side, i.e. the
perspectives and interests of the individuals who obtained citizenship from abroad.
In this paper, I analyze the sociological logic behind the global phenomenon of dual
citizenship acquisition from abroad; to this end, I use an original dataset constructed from
administrative statistics from six citizenship-granting European countries. Based on these data, I
make three arguments. First, most applications for ancestry-based non-resident European
citizenship are made by citizens of Latin American and Eastern European countries. Second,
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applicants from those regions exhibit a practical-economic approach to their second citizenship,
and seek it as a way of gaining access to the European Union and insuring themselves against
economic risks. And third, citizens of Western countries (North America, Western Europe and
Australia), for which dual citizenship does not carry such uses, exhibit lower demand and are not
affected by economic incentives. These findings suggest that global inequality in citizenship
worth is the main force that drives the acquisition of European citizenship from abroad.
The paper proceeds as follows. First, I discuss the legal conditions of possibility of non-
resident citizenship acquisition and its theoretical relevance. I then present a theory that explains
patterns of citizenship acquisition on the basis of global stratification. I test this theory using an
original dataset on European citizenship acquisition that is introduced in this paper. In
conclusion, I discuss some of the broader sociological implications, including the emergence of
instrumental, commoditized and a-political conceptions of citizenship.
Long-distance citizenship, a new form of membership
Non-resident dual citizenship is a new kind of relationship between a state and an
individual, one that became possible through the recent legitimization of non-exclusive and non-
territorial forms of state membership. For most of the 20th century, nationality was understood as
an exclusive, territorialized and binding tie; dual nationality, accordingly, was a disruptive
element within a global order based on states with mutually exclusive territories and populations
(Spiro 1997; Faist and Gerdes 2004). In 1990, only a quarter of countries in Europe, the
Americas and Oceania tolerated dual citizenship; by 2010, three-quarters of them permitted it
(Harpaz 2014; see also Sejersen 2008; Blätter et al. 2009). Today, the acceptance of multiple
nationality has arguably become a new global norm (Vink and de Groot 2010; Weil 2011).
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It should be made clear, however, that dual citizenship rarely entails two symmetric
memberships. Most dual citizens still have a primary country of residence where they exercise
all the rights and duties of an ordinary citizen: working, paying taxes, owning or renting
property, voting and so on. The novel and intriguing aspect is their relation to their second
country of citizenship, the one in which they do not reside. Often, this relationship amounts to
carrying a second passport, which provides extra rights while imposing few additional
obligations. Even dual citizens who are heavily engaged in cross-border activities, such as
transnational entrepreneurs or circular migrants, usually have an identifiable “center of life”
where they are rooted more firmly. David FitzGerald (2012) described the non-resident aspect of
dual citizenship as “citizenship á la carte”: dual citizens pick and choose the contents of their
non-resident citizenship out of a menu of potential rights, privileges and uses. I will refer to the
non-resident aspect of dual citizenship as long-distance citizenship and to the acquisition of a
second citizenship from abroad as long-distance naturalization.3
Long-distance citizenship is a novel sociological construct that cannot be understood
solely on the basis of a top-down analysis of laws and government programs. Rather, it must also
be explored from the perspective of the people who acquire and use it. Previous studies of dual
citizenship examined immigrants who naturalized in a new country while retaining their original
citizenship (Jones-Correa 2001; Bloemraad 2004; Mazzolari 2009). In such cases, long-distance
citizenship is typically created as a byproduct of the acquisition of resident citizenship, in the
sense that immigrants do not usually have to take any special action to retain their original
citizenship. In this paper, in contrast, I mainly focus on non-immigrants who make a conscious
decision to obtain long-distance citizenship and invest time and money in doing so. This focus
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would allow us to directly address the question of demand, which is difficult to approach in
studies of dual citizenship created through passive retention.
Becoming a European Union citizen – from abroad
European states were at the forefront of the global shift towards dual citizenship, and
most of them now permit it. Following that change, some European countries (including Italy,
Switzerland, Finland, Romania, Hungary and Spain) invited descendants of former nationals to
reacquire citizenship. (Dumbrava 2014). Other countries, like Bulgaria and Croatia, offer
citizenship on the basis of ethnicity (Pogonyi, Kovács and Körtvélyesi 2010). Germany offers
citizenship to the descendants of German Jews who fled the Nazi regime (Hailbronner 2010). In
all those cases, neither residence nor the renunciation of former citizenship are required.4
As a result of these new laws, tens of millions around the world became eligible for long-
distance citizenship in a European country – according to one estimate, the number of potentially
eligible individuals may exceed 150 million (Mateos 2013). At the same time, the consolidation
of the European Union has created a European zone of “interchangeable citizenship”: most of the
rights that come with citizenship in any EU member country may be used in any other member
country. This has not only generated massive immigration from Eastern to Western Europe
(Favell 2008), but also increased the global value of European ancestry, seeing as such ancestry
now opens a path to citizenship rights in attractive countries like the UK, Germany or Sweden.
Most European descendants around the world never acted upon their eligibility, and
probably never even became aware of it. Some, however, saw this new citizenship regime as an
opportunity that must not be missed, and applied to “reacquire” their parents’ or grandparents’
citizenship. This paper will use aggregate-level data from six European granting countries to
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analyze the forces that shaped their decision, in order to understand the root causes of global
demand for long-distance citizenship. The available data does not make it possible to directly
compare levels of demand for long-distance citizenship across different countries; therefore, this
paper will focus on comparing patterns of demand for citizenship.
The theoretical challenge of long-distance citizenship
How does the existing literature make sense of long-distance citizenship? In recent years,
a substantial number of works began to address this topic. This literature mostly focused on the
dynamics that led states to extend rights to populations abroad and the consequences of this
reconfiguration. Influential theories pointed to transnational political dynamics (Bauböck 2003;
Escobar 2007), geopolitical and demographic aspirations of granting countries (Joppke 2003;
Pogonyi et al. 2010) and a post-territorial reorganization of the state (Sassen 2006; Gamlen 2008;
Ragazzi 2009). Few studies examined the behavior of non-resident and dual citizens themselves.
Most of the existing citizen-level literature on dual citizenship was produced by students
of migration, who analyzed this phenomenon in the context of transnationalism, i.e. the cross-
border activities of immigrants which tie their society of settlement with their society of origin
(Basch, Schiller and Blanc-Szanton 1994; Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt 1999). This literature
focused on immigrants in the West and explored dual citizenship in the context of transnational
practices like emigrant political participation (e.g. Jones-Correa 2001; FitzGerald 2009),
transborder economic activities (e.g. Portes, Guarnizo and Haller 2002) and diaspora identity
(e.g. Bloemraad 2004). In those studies, dual citizenship was treated a facilitator of political,
economic or identity transnationalism. However, the possession of origin-country citizenship
was not treated by immigrants – or sociologists – as an end in itself, because the value of
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citizenship was tied to specific transnational activities and inseparable from preexisting social
and sentimental ties with their country of origin.
A very different picture emerges from studies that examined dual citizenship outside the
West. In recent years, a number of sociologists and anthropologists conducted qualitatively-
driven case studies on dual citizenship among diaspora Chinese in Southeast Asia (Ong 1999),
Macedonians who seek Bulgarian citizenship (Neofotistos 2009), Italian- and Spanish-origin
Argentines (Tintori 2011; Cook-Martin 2013) and Israelis of Central and Eastern European
origin (Harpaz 2013). In those different cases, researchers found high demand for dual
citizenship from EU or North American countries. Respondents cited a wide range of reasons for
seeking dual citizenship, most of them instrumental and of a general character: economic
opportunities in the EU, an insurance policy against war or persecution, the enhanced mobility
and prestige that a “European passport” provides. Another important motive was the desire to
express one’s ethnic identity (Pogonyi et al. 2010). Many applicants, nonetheless, sought
citizenship in countries to which they had no sentimental attachment and whose languages they
could not even speak.
While those interview- and ethnography-based studies were extremely useful in bringing
out the perspective of citizenship applicants, they do not allow us to determine the relative
weight of different motives – a task that requires statistical analysis. More broadly, the existing
literature does not account for the differences in relation to dual citizenship between Western and
non-Western countries. Below, I will present a theory that explains patterns of long-distance
naturalization on the basis of applicants’ positions within a global hierarchy of citizenship. Then,
I will use an original dataset to test the hypotheses generated by that theory.
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Global stratification: the key to long-distance naturalization
Until now, statistical analyses of citizenship acquisition patterns focused on ordinary
naturalization – the acquisition of resident citizenship by immigrants in Western Europe and
North America. These studies pointed out that the likelihood of immigrants to naturalize was
affected not only by individual characteristics (like education or language skills), but also by
various origin-country characteristics: its level of economic development and political freedom,
whether it experienced conflict, its citizenship regime and patterns of migration. Overall, as the
attractiveness of the origin country declined, the likelihood of naturalization in the destination
country increased (Yang 1994; Jones-Correa 2001; Bloemraad 2002; Chiswick and Miller 2008).
In a recent study on immigrant naturalization in Western Europe, Vink, Prokić-Breuer
and Dronkers (2013), treated origin-country citizenship not only as an explanatory variable (i.e.
immigrants from low-income countries are more likely to naturalize), Vink et al. (2013) but also
used it as a scope condition. This allowed them to posit a novel argument about how origin-
country income level shapes responses to different incentives to naturalize. Immigrants from
highly-developed countries tended to naturalize when they became “rooted” through lifestyle and
family ties, while immigrants from low/middle-development countries were much more strongly
affected by economic factors. This difference is explained by the higher payoff that immigrants
from less developed countries expected from acquiring citizenship in a rich country.
This finding suggests that “citizenship behavior,” i.e. patterned relationships between
various incentives and citizenship acquisition, is conditioned by the relation between the value of
an immigrant’s original citizenship and the one he or she stands to gain. Faced with the
possibility of acquiring “higher-value” citizenship, immigrants display more instrumental
behavior. There is an obvious difference between ordinary naturalization – the acquisition of
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resident citizenship in a country to which one has no prior ethnic tie – and long-distance
naturalization, which is the acquisition of non-resident citizenship based on pre-existing ethnic or
family ties. Nonetheless, the same structural logic that was identified in immigrant naturalization
can also be applied to long-distance naturalization. Here, too, the value of one’s original
citizenship is expected to act as a scope condition that shapes citizenship behavior.
The uses of dual citizenship: specific-sentimental vs. general-instrumental
In this paper, I argue that global inequality in the value of citizenship is the key factor
that shapes patterns of long-distance naturalization. Citizenship is today the most important
component of global stratification. As the economist Branko Milanovic (2012) put it, we are
living in a “non-Marxian world”: at the time that Marx wrote “The Communist Manifesto” and
“The Capital,” two-thirds of global income inequality was explained by class (within-country
differences) and only about a third by between-country differences (i.e. citizenship). Today, the
ratio is flipped: citizenship statistically explains two-thirds of global inequality, and within-
country differences explain only a third (Milanovic 2012).5 Almost all of the world’s highest-
income countries are in the West, and these countries also provide their citizens with the highest
levels of security, rights and travel freedom.6 Thanks to the expansion and consolidation of the
European Union, citizenship in any one of 32 European countries (EU plus associated countries
like Switzerland and Norway) now provides access to the full benefits of Western citizenship.
All this leads to the conclusion that citizenship is today the most important factor that
determines a person’s life chances – more than class, race or gender. Citizenship in any Western
nation secures one’s position at the top of the global class structure (Macklin 2007; Shachar and
Hirschl 2007; Centeno and Cohen 2010). We can describe Western citizenship as setting the
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global ideal of citizenship worth, while other countries suffer from various “citizenship deficits”
– for example, in opportunities or security.
How, then, does inequality shape patterns of long-distance naturalization? I argue that
global disparities in citizenship value construct two distinct ways of relating to long-distance
citizenship. For citizens of Western countries, dual citizenship would have specific use-values
that are conditional upon preexisting sentimental ties; therefore, demand for it would be low.
Outside the West, long-distance citizenship from a Western country would carry general use-
value that extends beyond ties to a particular country; therefore, it will be seen as a practical
investment and demand will be high.
To clarify the difference, let us consider a resident citizen of a Western country, say, an
American citizen living in the United States who is eligible to obtain ancestry-based dual
citizenship. In all probability, this person would obtain a second citizenship only if she were
interested in establishing or maintaining specific transnational ties with her origin country. For
example, a Mexican-American might seek dual citizenship in order to inherit property in Mexico
or make a declaration of identity. However, Mexican dual citizenship would have little draw for
Americans without prior ties to Mexico. For another example, Italian citizenship might be more
useful because it provides rights in all EU countries, but it would still be irrelevant for most
people who do not plan to spend time in Europe. Since Western citizens do not compensate for
citizenship deficits (e.g. the second citizenship would not provide access to better-paying jobs),
long-distance citizenship is restricted to specific, often sentimental, uses. Therefore, demand will
be low and it will be unaffected by changes in economic or political conditions.
Resident citizens of non-Western countries, in contrast, often suffer from various deficits
in their home-country citizenship: high unemployment, low wages, corruption, chronic insecurity
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etc. Under such conditions, long-distance citizenship from a Western country acquires a general
use-value which is derived from disparities in the global state system. First, Western citizenship
provides access to higher wages and better opportunities for employment and education. Second,
Western countries are more stable. Therefore, Western citizenship provides insurance against
political or economic catastrophe. These use-values of long-distance citizenship – along with
additional uses like freedom of movement or status, which will be less central here – came up in
studies on dual citizens in non-Western countries, including Macedonia, Southeast Asia,
Argentina and Israel (Ong 1999; Neofotistos 2009; Cook-Martin 2013; Harpaz 2013).7
I will refer to long-distance Western citizenship outside the West as compensatory
citizenship, since it allows dual citizens to make up for deficits in their home-country citizenship.
The general usefulness of compensatory citizenship means that interest in acquiring it would
extend beyond people with sentimental ties to the granting country (of course, many cases also
involve sentimental ties). Thus, people outside the West would exhibit high demand for long-
distance Western citizenship; moreover, since citizenship is seen as a practical investment,
demand is expected to fluctuate in response to changes in economic and political conditions.
Hypotheses
The global stratification theory predicts two distinct kinds of citizenship behavior:
Western applicants would seek long-distance citizenship for specific or personal reasons while
non-Western applicants would seek compensatory citizenship. This leads to four hypotheses.
The first prediction is that more people from non-Western residence countries will apply
for long-distance naturalization relative to eligible people in Western residence countries – they
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have a strong incentive to do so because of the gap between the citizenship that they currently
hold and the one that they stand to gain. This leads to the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Long-distance naturalization will be higher in non-Western residence countries
than in Western residence countries
The next three hypotheses concern time-dependent patterns of citizenship acquisition that
are expected to operate differently in Western and non-Western countries. The explanatory
variables are economic, political, legal and social conditions, which are expected to change
acquisition levels between years within the same dyad by shifting the balance between the
perceived costs and benefits of citizenship. The costs of application include a monetary
expenditure (typically between 400 and 1,000 US$) and a time investment (the process usually
takes over a year). In some cases, there is also a potential risk of legal and social sanctions.
Several political and economic factors are expected to impact citizenship acquisition.
First, the value of long-distance citizenship would increase when the country of eligibility joins
the European Union, if the residence country is not a member. Alongside this combined political-
economic variable, two purely economic factors are also expected to have an effect:
unemployment and economic growth in the country of residence (see Massey et al. (1993) on the
determinants of international migration). Two political factors – levels of democracy and conflict
in the country of residence – are also expected to affect the attractiveness of dual citizenship.8
Legal conditions in both granting and residence countries are also expected to play a role.
In addition, internal dynamics in each country should lead increases or decreases in one
year are expected to be followed by further movement in the same direction the following year.
This would result from three processes. First, as more people obtain citizenship, information
about it spreads. Second, a “market for citizenship” emerges thanks to interested experts
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(lawyers, translators and bureaucratic middlemen) who advertise and provide citizenship services
(Neofotistos 2009; Cook-Martin 2013; Harpaz 2013). A third effect is demographic depletion:
individuals who apply for citizenship in a specific year eliminate themselves from the pool of
eligible individuals (the population at risk, in demographic terms) for the following year.
Therefore, declines in acquisition might represent a shrinking of the population at risk and will
be followed by further declines. I refer to this triple effect as diffusion/depletion.9
These independent variables are expected to operate differently in the West and outside
it. Eligible individuals in Western countries – for example, Finnish descendants in Germany or
Romanian descendants in the United States – would be interested in citizenship for specific-
personal reasons (e.g. inheritance, identity) and not as a way of making up for citizenship
deficits. Therefore, they would not be affected by any of the political and economic variables
that were discussed above. This leads to the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: Long-distance naturalization in Western residence countries will not increase in
response to economic and political factors or when the granting country joins the EU
Citizens of non-Western countries, according to the theory, suffer from deficits in
economic opportunities, stability and/or democratic rights, and would therefore exhibit a much
more pragmatic approach to long-distance naturalization in an EU country. Eligible populations
in such countries – for example, Italian descendants in Argentina or ethnic Bulgarians in
Moldova – would be highly responsive to any changes that modify the relative value of their
citizenship. This includes the granting country joining the EU, a pull factor, as well as a number
of political and economic push factors: unemployment, negative economic growth, conflict and
restriction of rights. This leads to the following hypothesis:
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Hypothesis 3: Long-distance naturalization in non-Western residence countries will increase
when the granting country joins the European Union and in response to declines in the economic
and political attractiveness of the residence country
At the same time, the theory predicts that legal factors and diffusion/depletion will have a
stronger effect in Western countries. We can think of economic and political variables as
modifying the benefits of long-distance citizenship and of legal and social factors as modifying
the costs. Eligible populations in the West, for whom the practical benefits of citizenship are low
anyway, respond more strongly to legal and social changes that make it easier to apply (a “why
not?” effect). Non-Western applicants, in contrast, focus on the expected benefits of citizenship
and are therefore more proactive and less attentive to costs. Moreover, they might be more
accustomed to bending rules. This leads to the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 4: Long-distance naturalization in both Western and non-Western residence
countries will be responsive to legal changes and diffusion/depletion; however, the effect will be
stronger in Western residence countries
Data
In order to test these hypotheses, I use an original dataset that I constructed using
statistics on long-distance naturalization in six European countries that offer ancestry-based
facilitated naturalization that requires neither residence nor renunciation of former citizenship.
These countries are Italy, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Bulgaria and Romania. Applicants
came from 33 residence countries (this is the term I will use to refer to applicants’ country of
original citizenship).10 To my knowledge, this is the first attempt to systematically collect and
analyze cross-national data on this question. The time-variant analysis focuses on within-dyad
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variation between years, while controlling for the size differences between dyads. This is
achieved by using a standardized dependent variable. The unit of analysis is dyad-years (e.g.
Italy-Argentina 1999, Finland-Sweden 2005) and the full sample includes 75 dyads and 841
dyad-years (see Appendix 1 for a full list of dyads and sources).
I collected the data between 2011 and 2014, using statistics that I obtained directly from
officials in each country or from reports I located on the relevant authority’s website (for Italy, I
use statistics collected by Guido Tintori (2009)). Most materials were not available in English,
and I translated them from German, Italian, Romanian and Finnish.11 I tried to obtain statistics
from 25 additional countries, but data were unavailable.
While the dataset is limited by data availability, it includes a diverse range of European
granting countries: three long-term EU members (Germany, Italy and Finland), two recent EU
entrants (Romania and Bulgaria) and a rich non-EU European country (Switzerland). This should
make it representative of long-distance naturalization in Europe, including countries for which
data was not available. Three citizenship-granting countries that were not included (because only
partial data were available for them) exhibited similar patterns to the sampled countries (see
below, p. 18). Furthermore, the sample is diverse enough to represent the residence countries
where eligible populations are concentrated, as it includes ten countries I classified as Western
(seven Western European countries, the U.S., Canada and Australia) and 23 countries classified
as non-Western (12 Latin American and nine Eastern European countries, Israel and Iran).
Below, I present two analyses of the dataset. First, I analyze applicants’ main regions of
origin. Then, I offer a statistical analysis of time-dependent trends in citizenship acquisition.
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I. The geography of long-distance naturalization
Table 1 below presents a summary of the dataset; for each granting country, it lists the
top five residence countries of applicants for the total period of observation (which includes
different years for each country). Note that these countries continue to give out citizenships and
there is no reason to assume that demand is dying out (all granting countries except Finland
approved more new citizens in the final two years of observation than in the first two).
<Table 1 about here>
Table 1 demonstrates the diversity of long-distance naturalization in terms of applicants’
countries of residence. Italian citizenship was mostly acquired by Latin Americans, while
citizenship in Romania and Bulgaria was primarily sought by people in other Eastern European
countries. Applicants for Swiss and Finnish citizenship were more evenly spread out between
European countries, the Americas and Australia, while applicants for restitution of German
citizenship were found mainly in Israel and the United States. Underlying this seeming diversity,
however, is a clear regional pattern: there were far more acquisitions of long-distance EU
citizenship in Latin America and Eastern Europe than in Western Europe and North America.
The top five residence countries in the sample were all Latin American or Eastern
European: Argentina, Moldova, Brazil, Macedonia and Uruguay. Together, these five countries
accounted for 73% of all citizenship acquisition in the table. Other countries whose citizens filed
more than 20,000 applications were France, Australia, Israel, Canada, USA and Chile. In total,
82% of all citizenship acquisitions in the dataset were made by Latin Americans and Eastern
Europeans; only 14% were made by Western Europeans, Americans, Canadians and Australians.
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The pattern whereby most applications come from outside the West was not driven by a
single country but was found in the four leading granting countries (Switzerland and Finland,
where this pattern does not apply, also gave out the smallest number of citizenships). Moreover,
the same pattern also characterized long-distance naturalization in three countries that were not
included in the dataset because no year-specific data was available for them – Spain, Hungary
and Croatia, where approximately 96% to 98% of applicants for long-distance citizenship were
from Eastern Europe or Latin America (Štiks 2010; Bálint 2014; Izquierdo and Chao 2015).
Unfortunately, the available data do not permit a direct comparison of levels of demand
across countries, since we cannot determine precisely the size of the eligible population in each
case.12 However, in order to rule out the possibility that the differences in citizenship acquisition
are driven by differences in the sizes of the eligible populations, I will briefly cite two historical
migration statistics. Argentina and Brazil together received about 15% of the emigrants who left
Italy between 1861 and 1980, whereas the United States and France together received over 30%
of those emigrants (AltreItalie 2014). Nonetheless, Argentines and Brazilians provided two-
thirds of citizenship applications in 1998-2007, while less than 5% of applicants originated from
the U.S. and France. Another example: the United States and Israel received roughly equal
numbers of German-Jewish refugees in 1933-1950 (USHMM 2014), but the number of Israeli
applicants for German citizenship in 2000-2011, however, was almost seven times higher.
We can conclude that the large majority of those who obtain long-distance European
citizenship are from Latin America and Eastern Europe, and that demand for such citizenship is
significantly higher outside the West. This corroborates Hypothesis 1.
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II. Time-dependent trends: explaining fluctuations in demand
In this section, I offer a statistical analysis of variations in the demand for citizenship
between years. This would allow us to characterize the citizenship behavior of different
populations and explore the differences between Western and non-Western applicants.
Dependent variable
Due to the data limitations mentioned above, it was not possible to calculate citizenship
acquisition as a demographic rate, i.e. yearly number of events (acquisitions) divided by the
population at risk (the eligible population). I therefore I took an alternative approach and
calculated the dependent variable using a standardized variable in order to control for size
differences between dyads and focus on within-dyad, between-year variation. For example, the
dyad-year Italy-Mexico 2000 is compared to other dyad-years within the same dyad (Italy-
Mexico 1998, Italy-Mexico 1999, etc.) but not to dyad-years from other dyads (e.g. Italy-
Argentina 2000). The standardized Z-score was calculated using the following formula:
Number of citizenship acquisitions in a dyad-year – Dyad mean Dyad standard deviation
Since a very high percentage of applications were successful, this dependent variable
provides an indirect but reliable indicator of trends in demand for citizenship.13 To ensure
robustness, the models were additionally tested with an unstandardized dependent variable which
was logged in order to fit it on a linear scale. I restricted the analysis to dyads where at least one
year of observation had over 30 citizenship acquisitions. The number of citizenship applications
was adjusted yearly according to population growth or decline in the residence country.
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Independent variables
Economic and political variables
Granting country joins the EU: This binary variable indicates whether the non-resident country
is a member of the European Union while the resident country isn’t. For example, it was 0 for the
entire period of observation for the dyad Italy-France (because both countries are EU members)
and 1 for the entire period for Italy-Argentina. It changed from 0 to 1 in the dyads involving the
acquisition of Romanian and Bulgarian citizenship, when those countries joined the EU in
2007.14 This variable is expected to be positively correlated with citizenship acquisition.
Residence country unemployment: The unemployment rate in the country of residence, based on
World Bank data. It is expected to be positively correlated with citizenship acquisition.
Residence country GDP per capita growth: The annual percentage growth of the residence
country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita (in constant 2005 US$), based on World
Bank data. It is expected to be negatively correlated with citizenship acquisition.
Residence country democracy score: The democracy score of the residence country based on the
PolityIV dataset that evaluates regimes around the world on a scale between -10 and 10
(http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm). It is expected to be negatively correlated
with citizenship acquisition.
Residence country conflict score: The residence country’s conflict score. It is based on the
“Conflict Barometer” index published by the Heidelberg Institute on International Conflict
Research (http://www.hiik.de), ranking countries from 0 (no conflict) through 1 (latent conflict)
to 5 (war). It is expected to be positively correlated with citizenship acquisition.
Social and legal variables
Harpaz, Ancestry into Opportunity, Preprint
21
Diffusion/depletion: The citizenship acquisition score from the previous year of observation. It
captures the effects of knowledge diffusion, market institutionalization and demographic
depletion. It is expected to be positively correlated with citizenship acquisition.
Granting country restriction. This binary (dummy) variable measures whether the granting
country imposed legal or bureaucratic restrictions (e.g. a language requirement, deliberately slow
processing) on applications in a particular year. Such restrictions were imposed by Romania,
Bulgaria and Finland for parts of the relevant period. I coded this variable on the basis of
citizenship policy reports published by EU Democracy Observatory on Citizenship (http://eudo-
citizenship.eu). It is expected to be negatively correlated with citizenship acquisition.
Resident country restriction: This binary (dummy) variable measures whether the country of
residence imposed legal or bureaucratic restrictions on dual citizens, from restricting their
employment opportunities and political rights to banning dual citizenship (even when such a ban
is not imposed, it contributes to stigmatizing dual citizenship). I coded this variable using EUDO
country reports and additional sources (Bloemraad 2004; Escobar 2007; Sejersen 2008; Blatter et
al. 2009). It is expected to be negatively correlated with citizenship acquisition.
The means and standard deviations of the variables are summarized in Table 2 below.
<Table 2 about here>
Analysis
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22
I used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with dyad fixed effects to test for the
effect of the independent variables on citizenship acquisition over time. All independent
variables were lagged one year relative to the dependent variable to account for the processing
time of applications (for example, citizenship acquisition in 1999 is examined in relation to the
independent variables of 1998).15 The dyad fixed effects, like the Z-score standardization, are
meant to control for structural differences between dyads.16 I included a dummy (binary) variable
for the year 2008 in order to control for the effects of the economic crisis.
I first present the effect of the independent variables on citizenship acquisition for the full
sample. Then, I analyze two subsamples of Western and non-Western residence countries in
order to test the hypothesis about the different citizenship behaviors of eligible populations.
Table 3 below presents the results of the regression analysis for the full sample.17
< Table 3 about here >
The results in Table 3 provide strong evidence that economic and political conditions
play a key role in the demand for long-distance citizenship. The single most important factor
affecting citizenship acquisition was EU accession of the granting country, which increased the
following year’s acquisition score by close to a full standard deviation, all other conditions being
equal. Increases in residence-country unemployment were also positively associated with
citizenship acquisition. Purely political variables had no significant effect on long-distance
citizenship, while legal factors in both granting and residence countries strongly affected it. As
Harpaz, Ancestry into Opportunity, Preprint
23
predicted, citizenship acquisition in one year was positively correlated with the previous year’s
acquisition level. Citizenship applications were depressed in 2008, presumably reflecting
applicants’ reluctance to make unnecessary expenditures in a time of economic crisis.
For the full sample, then, I find that EU accession and residence-country unemployment
were driving long-distance naturalization in European countries. Note the high R² score
(R²=0.29), which suggests that model statistically explains a substantial part of the variation
between years. The results were robust to using a logged dependent variable. These findings
support the assumption that there is a strong economic-instrumental element in at least some
cases of long-distance naturalization.
The next step is to test the global stratification theory by comparing patterns of
citizenship acquisition in Western and non-Western countries. Table 4 below shows the
estimated coefficients when disaggregating the sample into subsamples.
<Table 4 about here >
The results presented in Table 4 provide strong support to the theory, but also call for
some revisions. In non-Western countries, the explanatory variable with the strongest effect on
citizenship acquisition was accession of the granting country to the EU, when the country of
residence was not in the Union. This variable increased citizenship acquisition by a full standard
deviation, all other conditions being equal. Residence-country unemployment was also positively
correlated with citizenship acquisition. That correlation was highly significant and had a large
effect: for example, a yearly increase of 3% in the unemployment rate (which is what Argentina,
Harpaz, Ancestry into Opportunity, Preprint
24
for example, experienced between 2000 and 2001) is expected to increase citizenship acquisition
by more than a quarter of a standard deviation. Conversely, when residence-country
unemployment level declines, citizenship application is expected to decline as well. Purely
political factors like democracy and conflict, however, had no effect. In Western countries, in
line with the theory’s predictions, none of the economic and political variables had any
significant effect. These findings corroborate Hypotheses 2 (fully) and 3 (partly).
As for legal and social variables, the table shows that the effects of granting country
restriction and diffusion/depletion were significant in both Western and non-Western residence
countries. In Western countries, granting-country restrictions had by far the biggest effect,
reducing acquisition by one-and-a-half standard deviations, ceteris paribus. Residence-country
restrictions also had a strong negative effect in Western countries. Diffusion/depletion was the
only factor that was positively correlated with citizenship acquisition in the West. In non-
Western countries, in contrast, residence country restrictions had no effect, and the effects of
granting-country restrictions and diffusion/depletion were smaller than that of EU accession.
This suggests that eligible populations in the West were more responsive to changes in the costs
of citizenship than in its benefits; outside the West, in contrast, eligible individuals were far more
attuned to potential gains. This corroborates Hypothesis 4. The results were robust to using a
logged dependent variable.
Overall, the results of the analysis confirm the global stratification theory that posits the
existence of two distinct approaches to long-distance citizenship – specific-sentimental in the
West and general-instrumental outside it. While Hypotheses 2 and 4 were fully confirmed,
Hypothesis 3 had to be revised: only economic or combined political-economic incentives (EU
Harpaz, Ancestry into Opportunity, Preprint
25
accession, unemployment) led to increases in citizenship acquisition, while purely political
conditions (democracy, conflict) had no effect.
As an additional robustness test, I ran a separate regression for each residence country.18
Below are the single-country regression results for the seven residence countries that had over 30
dyad-years and where at least one explanatory variable was statistically significant. Table 5
summarizes the independent variables that were significant for each residence country.
<Table 5 about here>
In the three Western residence countries in the table, only legal and social variables were
statistically significant, and demand for long-distance citizenship did not fluctuate in response to
political and economic conditions. In each of the non-Western countries, in contrast, some
economic and political variables were statistically significant. We should be cautious when
interpreting the single-country regressions because of the small number of observations;
therefore, I will not analyze them further here. However, the results lend additional support to the
argument about divergent approaches to long-distance citizenship in the West and outside it.
Conclusions
This paper offered a statistical analysis of the forces that drive the acquisition of non-
resident dual citizenship in EU countries. It made use of an original dataset that was created for
that purpose from previously-unanalyzed administrative data. The results showed that such
Harpaz, Ancestry into Opportunity, Preprint
26
demand is driven by gaps in the value of citizenship in different world regions. The large
majority of long-distance naturalizations were initiated by Eastern Europeans and Latin
Americans who wished to gain access to the Western European zone of prosperity and stability.
This demonstrates the powerful pull effect of Western citizenship on people outside the West. In
contrast, relatively few citizens of Western countries acquired ancestry-based long-distance
citizenship and demand was unaffected by changes in political and economic conditions.
As the compensatory citizenship theory predicted, applicants from outside the West were
highly responsive to the granting country’s accession to the EU and to purely economic
conditions like unemployment. One unexpected finding, however, calls for a revision of the
initial hypotheses: purely political factors – democracy and conflict – were found to have no
effect on citizenship acquisition. This is a surprise, given the central role that rights and
participation play in our conception of citizenship, including in debates on non-resident
citizenship (e.g. Marshall 1950; Brubaker 1992; Bauböck 2003; Ragazzi 2009).
While the macro-level data used here do not allow a direct inference about applicants’
motivations, non-Western applicants’ focus of on economic incentives suggests that they view
their second citizenship first and foremost as an economic asset, and accord less importance to its
political and sentimental. These results are consistent with recent arguments that highlight the
economic value of citizenship within a stratified global order (Macklin 2007; Shachar and
Hirschl 2007), as well as the instrumental attitudes that were found among dual citizens in
Southeast Asia, Macedonia and Argentina (Ong 1999; Neofotistos 2009; Cook-Martin 2013). In
particular, they align with findings of a study on Central and Eastern European dual citizenship
in Israel, in which respondents consistently referred to their second citizenship as “just a
Harpaz, Ancestry into Opportunity, Preprint
27
European passport”: in that case, citizenship is stripped of national, political and sentimental
meanings and reframed as a tangible object and a form of private property (Harpaz 2013).
This suggests that the global spread of economically-motivated long-distance
naturalization signifies the growing commoditization of citizenship, inasmuch as the once-
sanctified status of state membership is being recast as a portable document that allows access to
high-value territories and markets. Such commoditization might be an unavoidable consequence
of the post-exclusive and post-territorial turn in citizenship, which allows people to obtain
citizenship in countries where they have never lived and to which they have no real ties. From
this perspective, the ancestry-based acquisition of European citizenship can be analyzed
alongside practices such as citizenship by investment (Dzankic 2012; Shachar and Bauböck
2014), birth tourism (Durand 2015) and ethnic repatriation (Brubaker and Kim 2011). All these
are strategies that allow individuals outside the West to convert preexisting resources (money,
location, information and/or ancestry) into rights in a Western country. Put together, they form
part of a historical process in which nation-state citizenship is taking on more and more of the
characteristics of class position within a highly-stratified world society.
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28
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Table 1: Long-Distance Naturalization in Six Countries, by Top Residence Countries
Granting Country
Years Residence Country
1
Residence Country
2
Residence Country
3
Residence Country
4
Residence Country
5
Total NR Citizenships
Granted
Italy
1998-2007
Argentina
(46%)
Brazil (21%)
Uruguay
(6%)
Australia
(5%)
Canada (3%)
758,726
Romania
2002-2012
Moldova
(97%)
Israel (1%)
Ukraine (0.7%)
Germany (0.3%)
USA
(0.2%)
172,965
Bulgaria
2002-2012
Macedonia
(54%)
Moldova
(27%)
Serbia (5%)
Ukraine
(4%)
Russia (4%)
96,564
Germany
2000-2011
Israel (77%)
USA (12%)
Argentina
(4%)
Brazil (4%)
Chile (2%)
33,213
Switzerland
1998-2012
France (53%)
Italy
(14%)
Germany
(6%)
USA (5%)
Argentina
(4%)
25,092
Finland
2003-2012
Sweden (29%)
USA (21%)
Canada (19%)
Australia
(15%)
Germany
(7%)
18,372
Total
N/A
Argentina
(32%)
Moldova
(18%)
Brazil (15%)
Macedonia
(5%)
Uruguay
(4%)
1,101,932
Note: the table presents the six citizenship-granting countries included in the dataset and the total number of citizenship acquisition. For each citizenship-granting country, the top five residence countries of applicants are listed along with the percentage that applicants from each country formed out of total citizenship applicants in the relevant granting country. The “Total” row is an aggregate of all acquisitions listed in the table, and therefore includes different years. Sources: see Appendix 1.
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Table 2: Descriptive statistics for time-dependent analysis
Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
Dependent Variable
Citizenship acquisition (raw number) 841 1,316.98 5,833.59 0 79,027
Citizenship acquisition (Z-score) 841 0 0.95 -2.31 2.87
Citizenship acquisition (logged) 841 4.57 2.24 0 11.28 Independent Variables Economic and political
Granting country joins EU 883 0.55 0.50 0 1
Residence country unemployment (%) 882 8.75 4.56 1.3 37.3
Residence country growth (%) 881 2.11 3.51 -14.42 16.24
Residence country democracy score 883 8.25 3.02 -7 10
Residence country conflict score 882 1.84 1.38 0 5 Legal and social
Diffusion/depletion 840 0 0.96 -2.31 2.87
Granting country restriction 915 0.10 0.30 0 1
Residence country restriction 915 0.28 0.45 0 1
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Table 3: Estimated coefficients for full sample of residence countries
Full Sample Economic and political
Granting country joins EU 0.721***
(0.177)
Res. country unemployment (%) 0.044*
(0.019)
Res. country growth (%) -0.012
(0.010)
Res. country democracy score -0.007
(0.030)
Res. country conflict score -0.077
(0.045)
Legal and social Diffusion/depletion 0.355***
(0.034)
Granting country restriction -1.287***
(0.159)
Res. country restriction -0.515**
(0.172)
2008 -0.514***
(0.123)
Constant -0.182
(0.330)
Dyad dummies Y N 763 F 30.88 R-sq (within) 0.29 Standard errors in parentheses. * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001
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Table 4: Estimated coefficients for Western and non-Western residence countries
Western Residence Country
Non-Western Residence Country
Economic and political
Granting country joins EU
0.286 1.043***
(0.465) (0.203)
Res. country unemployment (%) -0.008 0.095***
(0.031) (0.024)
Res. country growth (%) -0.015 -0.001
(0.027) (0.011)
Res. country democracy score N/A -0.014
(0.030)
Res. country conflict score -0.118 -0.034
(0.089) (0.053)
Legal and social
Diffusion/depletion 0.391*** 0.308***
(0.054) (0.046)
Granting country restriction -1.524*** -0.828**
0.219 (0.262)
Res. country restriction -0.705** 0.162
(0.239) (0.249)
2008 -0.559** -0.542**
(0.18) (0.169)
Constant 0.644* -1.241**
(0.324) (0.406)
Dyad dummies Y Y N
326 437 F
16.45 18.55 R-sq (within) 0.32 0.30 Standard errors in parentheses. * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001
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Table 5: Statistically significant independent variables for selected residence countries
Note: the table shows the independent variables that were significantly correlated with citizenship acquisition (Z-score) in seven residence countries, as well as the strength and direction of the correlation. When the stars are followed by a minus sign in parentheses, the correlation was negative; otherwise, it was positive. The row “N” pertains to the number of dyad-years. “N of granting countries” is the number of granting countries for which data was available for each residence country.
Western Res. Countries Non-Western Res. Countries USA Australia France Israel Brazil Argentina Colombia Economic and political
Granting country joins EU ** Res. unemployment *
Res. country growth * (–) ** (–)
Res. democracy score Res. conflict score ** Legal and social Diffusion/depletion ** *** *** ** **
Grant. country restriction * (–) * (–) ** (–)
Res. country restriction
2008 * (–) N 50 50 34 59 43 34 34 N of granting countries 5 5 3 6 4 3 3
R² 0.43 0.5 0.49 0.59 0.27 0.73 0.37 *p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001
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Appendix 1: Country dyads included in the sample
The residence countries are ordered by dyad size.
Italy (1998-2007): Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Australia, France, Canada, Chile, Peru, USA,
Switzerland, Ecuador, Venezuela, Paraguay, Colombia, Guatemala, Cuba, Israel, Mexico.
Source: Tintori 2009.
Romania (2002-2012): Moldova, Israel, Ukraine, Germany, USA, Sweden, Iran, Canada.
Source: Data received upon request from Dolghier Constantin, based on statistics published by
the Romanian Ministry of Justice.
Bulgaria (2002-2012): Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Albania.
Source: data received upon request from the Office of the President of Bulgaria.
Germany (2000-2011): Israel, USA, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Australia, Colombia, Venezuela,
Switzerland, Canada, Ecuador, France.
Source: data received upon request from the German Federal Office of Administration.
Switzerland (1998-2012): France, Italy, Germany, USA, Argentina, Brazil, UK, Canada, Chile,
Colombia, Peru, Spain, Israel, Ecuador, Australia.
Source: data received upon request from the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police,
Federal Office for Migration.
Finland (2003-2012): Sweden, USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, UK, Russia,
Iran, Italy, Israel, Spain, Brazil.
Source: data received upon request from the Finnish Immigration Service.
1Inthispaper,Iusetheterm“citizenship”inadualsense,torefertoboththeformalstatusofmembershipinastate(whichissynonymouswith“nationality”)andthearrayofpracticesandbeliefsthatareincludedinanindividual’srelationtoherstateofcitizenship.2ThisfigureincludesstatisticsforRomania,Bulgaria,Germany,SwitzerlandandFinlandlistedinAppendix1,aswellseveralothersourcesforwhichyear-specificdatawereunavailable:Hungary(622,531acquisitionsin2011-2014,fromBálint2014),Croatia(1,150,000acquisitionsin1991-2006–thevastmajorityofthemfacilitatedreacquisitions–fromŠtiks2010)andSpain(491,101acquisitionsin2009-2011,fromIzquierdoandChao,forthcoming).Italsouses1998-2010statisticsforItaly(1,003,403acquisitions,fromTintori2012)insteadofthe1998-2007statisticsusedinthedataset.Ifwealsoaddcountriesforwhichdatawereunavailable,suchasFranceandPortugal,thetotalfigureshouldbeevenhigher.3Iusetheterm“long-distance”inapolitical,notgeographicalsense(cf.Anderson1992).Therefore,itincludesdualcitizenshipinaneighboringcountry.Furthermore,Idonotdenythatsomepeopleleadtrulytransnationallivesandhavestrongtiestotwocountries.
Harpaz, Ancestry into Opportunity, Preprint
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4AdetaileddiscussionoffacilitatednaturalizationschemesinEuropeUnioncountriescanbefoundinDumbrava(2014),Pogonyietal.(2010)andthedetailedcountryreportsproducedbytheEUDemocracyObservatoryonCitizenship(http://eudo-citizenship.eu).5Milanovicdecomposedthecontributionofaggregatedwithin-countryandbetween-countryincomevariancestoincomeinequalitythatwascalculatedfortheentireworldpopulation,basedonestimatesofhouseholdincome.The1/3-2/3breakdownsreportedhererefertothepartoftheglobalvarianceinincomethatwereexplainedbythecombinationoflocationandclass–about65%in1870and80%in2000(Milanovic2012).6Thispatternemergesfromthedemocracyandconflictindiceslistedunder“Independentvariables,”aswelltheStateFragilityIndex(http://www.systemicpeace.org)andTheEconomistDemocracyIndex(http://www.eiu.com)andtheHenleyandPartnersIndexofInternationalVisaRestrictions(http://www.henleyglobal.com).7IincludeIsraelinthenon-Westerncategoryinspiteofitshighincomelevel,becauseIsraelicitizensdonotenjoyWesternlevelsofsecurityandstability.8Itestedanadditionalmodelinwhichunemployment,growth,conflictanddemocracywereoperationalizedasarelationbetweenresidence-countryandgranting-countrylevels.Thekeyfindingswereunchanged.9Itmightseematfirstthatthedepletioneffectshouldbeexpressedasanegativecorrelation.Suchacorrelation,however,wouldcorrespondtoagraphthatzigzagsupanddown,withincreasesfollowedbydecreasesandviceversa.Noneoftheacquisitiondyadsfollowedthatpattern.Amuchmorecommonpatternwasaninverted-Ushape,withincreasesfollowedbyincreasesanddecreasesbydecreases.Presumably,thedepletioneffectisinitiallyoffsetbythediffusioneffect,butgainsmomentumasapplicationsaccumulate.Thisassumptionisreinforcedbythefactthisitwaspositiveandhighlysignificantinallthemodels.Whenincludingthisvariable,theZ-scoreandloggedmodelsproducednear-identicalresults;whenomittingit,theywereverydifferent.10Whilewecanbesurethatalmostallthosewhoacquiredcitizenshipbecamedualcitizens,thedatadoesnotallowustodeterminewithcertaintywherecitizenshipapplicantslived,sincemostgrantingcountriesonlyprovidedstatisticsonapplicants’citizenship.Undoubtedly,someapplicantswerelivingoutsidetheirfirstcountryofcitizenship(seeMateos2013).Nonetheless,theterm“residencecountry”accuratelycapturesthefirstcitizenshipforatleast90%ofapplicants,sinceevenhigh-emigrationresidencecountrieshadnomorethan10-12%oftheirpopulationlivingabroad.11IcanreadGermanandItalian.IusedtranslationsoftwarefortheRomanianandFinnishtextsandconfirmedthetranslationswiththeindividualswhoprovidedtheinformation.12Itwouldbeextremelydifficulttocalculatetheeligiblepopulationforevenonedyad,letaloneallofthem.Forexample,18millionAmericansdeclaredItalianancestryinthecensus(USCensus2011),butthisisnotareliablebasisforcalculatingthepopulationthatispotentiallyeligibleforItaliancitizenship,sinceanyonewithanydegreeofItalianancestryispotentiallyeligible.Inmostothercases,noeligibilitydatawasavailableatall.13Theuseofaggregatedatacreatesapotentialforecologicalfallacy,i.e.anunjustifiedinferencefromgroupcorrelationstoindividualcorrelations.Nocross-nationalstatisticswereavailableontheindividualcharacteristicsofcitizenshipapplicants.Inlightoftheselimitations,theargumentsandfindingsdonotpertaintoindividuals,butratherdescribetheeffectofaggregateconditionsonaggregatelevelsofdemand.Thus,thisstudytriestoexplainoperateattheleveloftheeligiblepopulationratherthanthatoftheindividualagent.14BulgariaandRomaniarestrictedlong-distancenaturalizationintheyearsleadinguptotheirEUaccession.Onceacceptedin2007,theybeganhandlinglongbacklogs,focusingonMacedoniaandMoldova(Iordachi2010;SmilovandJileva2013).Therefore,someoftheincreaseinthosetworesidencecountrieswascausedbychangesinsupply,notdemand.However,post-accessionincreaseswereobservedinalmostallresidencecountries,suggestingthatatleastpartoftheincreaseistheresultofchangesindemand.15Isetthedelayatoneyearonthebasisofanestimatethatthemeanprocessingtimewasbetween1-1.5years.Ialsoranthemodelswithatwo-yearlagandthemainfindingsheld.16Themainfindingswererobusttorunningtheanalysiswithoutthedyaddummies.17ThesamplesizeinTable3issmallerthaninTable2becausethefirstyearofobservationineachdyadwasomittedwhenthediffusion/depletionvariablewasincluded.18Ialsoranseparateregressionsforeachgrantingcountryandfoundnosystematicdifferencesbetweenthem.
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