Passport island. The market for EU citizenship in Cyprus investigates in depth a case of a country naturalizing foreign investors, to provide the most comprehensive analysis of how citizenship is becoming commodified to date. The book argues that citizenship is not an issue of politics anymore – but one of political economy.
The Republic of Cyprus opened a route to naturalisation for non-nationals who wanted access to the EU - most of them wealthy Russians. The magnitude of the phenomenon is staggering. Thousands of foreign investors became Cypriots by buying properties - and passports - on the island. The 'EU passport' became the country's major export.
The book thus shows how a national passport becomes a global commodity. Examining the mobility of international elites, the ethnography turns migration studies on its head, as citizenship has become a tool for the mobility of the rich. Passport island shows how selling passports is tied up with economic crises, migration, property, inequality, and European politics. It shows how marketing citizenship is doing offshoring by other means.
Welcome to book launch at Scene HumSam!
Program:
- Panel discussion with Theodoros Rakopoulos, Hege Høyer Leivestad and Ola G. Berta
- Q&A
- Book sale
Theodoros Rakopoulos is Professor at the Social Anthropology department, University of Oslo. He is the author of the monograph From clans to co-ops: Confiscated mafia land in Sicily (2017), editor of The global life of austerity (2018) and co-editor of Towards an anthropology of wealth (2019).
Hege Høyer Leivestad is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo. She is the author of the monograph Caravans: Lives on Wheels in Contemporary Europe (2018), while her current book project The Port: Life and Labour at the Strait of Gibraltar is based on long-term fieldwork in a Spanish cargo port.
Ola G. Berta is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen. As part of the interdisciplinary SEAS programme, he is working on a research project about tuna fisheries and ocean diplomacy in Oceania.