Ancestry into Opportunity: How Global Inequality Drives Demand for Long-distance European Union Citizenship

Harpaz, Ancestry into Opportunity, Preprint

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Ancestry into Opportunity:

How Global Inequality Drives Demand for Long-Distance EU

Citizenship

YossiHarpaz,PrincetonUniversity

[email protected]

***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


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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.


Analysis


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


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,


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


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.


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


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


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.


28

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32

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.


33

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


34

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


35

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


36

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


37

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.


38

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.

Ancestry into Opportunity: How Global Inequality Drives Demand for Long-distance European Union Citizenship

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