Jelena Džankić is Director for the Widening Europe Programme and the CIVICA Alliance at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She is also Director of GGP Southeastern Europe and Co-Director of the Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT) at the Institute’s Robert Schuman Centre. Jelena holds a PhD degree in International Studies from the University of Cambridge, and has taught and researched at the University of Edinburgh, University College London, University of Fribourg, and Central European University. She is the author of the Global Market for Investor Citizenship (Palgrave 2019), a leading study in the field of wealth-based citizenship acquisition. She has published in outlets such as Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Nationalities Papers, and International Migration Review.
Citizenship-by-investment (CBI) programs, granting citizenship in return for financial payment or investment, have become a global phenomenon in recent years. The workings of these exceptional programs have caused controversy in real-life politics, ranging from protests, to the downfall of politicians, and to punitive bilateral and international measures. Even so, knowledge on why countries would put their citizenship up for sale and why people ‘buy’ passports has remained limited. In her talk, Jelena Dzankic combines insights from political science and legal theory to explore the states’ propensity to adopt investor citizenship policies as part of the offshore world, or the legal spaces of ‘archipelago capitalism’. She shows how structural inequalities among states combine with inequalities of life opportunity linked to citizenship as a ‘birthright lottery’ to open up a space for countries to sell, and individuals to buy, passports.
In allegato la locandina.