In this chapter, I unpack the rationalization for instrumental citizenship by distinguishing between Greek and Roman ways of approaching the concept. Explaining the rise of investment migration around the world is best handled using the Roman ideal, focusing on the status of citizenship as a creature of legal individualism, rather than the participatory dimension of the Greek conception.

Adding a race and colonialism component, this chapter examines how citizenship has been used as a powerful tool to undermine the colonized and erect an essentially race-based firewall between white Europeans, who are citizens, and colonials who are given lesser status. Investment migration is inseparable from citizenship’s past as a colonial tool of racial domination and subjugation.

Delving into the necessary and unsurprising instrumentalization of citizenship, this chapter looks at the role it plays in global inequalities. It shows how unsurprising the instrumental twist is and how investment migration is almost unavoidable. In this context, investment migration offers just one of many ways available to the losers of the birthright lottery to upgrade their initial status assignment.

Starting in the Middle Ages, this chapter demonstrates that investment migration is hardly new. It looks at the micropolitics of citizenship acquisition through monetary grants in a rage of cases across Europe. Indeed, it was the most popular lawful way to acquire the citizenship of mediaeval cities outside of marriage.

This chapter offers a political science take on citizenship by investment through a tour d’horizon. Examining transformations over centuries, the analysis integrates investment migration – and especially citizenship for sale – in the classical political science literature.