The Rise of Dual Citizenship: Between Statecraft and Insurance Policy

Over the past three decades, d ual citizenship has transformed from a rare legal anomaly into a mainstream global practice. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, dual citizens were objects of suspicion, derided for what was often called “political bigamy.” Nowadays, the majority of countries in Europe and the Americas, as well as many in Asia, allow their citizens to hold more than one nationality.¹Harpaz, Yossi. 2019. Citizenship 2.0: Dual Nationality as a Global Asset. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. This shift reflects a broader transformation in the way citizenship is understood and used by states as well as individuals. On both sides, the acceptance of dual citizenship is creating new options for strategic and flexible behavior. States increasingly view citizenship as a policy tool for pursuing economic, demographic, and geopolitical objectives. Meanwhile, individuals—especially those outside the West—approach citizenship as a strategic asset: a means of securing mobility, opportunity, and protection in an uncertain world.

For states, the shift toward tolerating dual citizenship has opened new policy horizons. Governments have learned to treat citizenship as a form of leverage and soft power, extending it beyond national borders to reach people who are perceived as having economic, symbolic, geopolitical or even electoral value.

A prominent example concerns ancestry-based citizenship. Countries like Italy, Ireland and Spain grant citizenship to millions of descendants of emigrants, creating vast new diasporas of nominal citizens who may never reside in the country. In Central and Eastern Europe, co-ethnic citizenship laws serve both symbolic and territorial aims—Hungary, for instance, has granted citizenship to over a million ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring states.²Harpaz, Yossi. 2019. Citizenship 2.0: Dual Nationality as a Global Asset. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Another highly consequential development has been the rise of the investment migration industry. Citizenship-by-investment (CBI) and residence-by-investment (RBI) programs represent a decisive break from the traditional model of national membership. Here, the link between the individual and the state is primarily transactional. Caribbean nations pioneered the sale of passports in the 1980s, but the market took off in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when EU member states like Malta and Cyprus began offering citizenship in exchange for investments exceeding one million euros. Today, more than a dozen countries around the world offer citizenship-by-investment (CBI), while dozens more provide residence-by-investment (RBI) programs that may lead to citizenship through naturalization.³Surak, Kristin. 2021. “Millionaire Mobility and the Sale of Citizenship”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47(1):166–189. This sector now represents a multi-billion-dollar global industry. For example, Turkey’s CBI program, which is the world’s largest, has generated over $15 billion USD from 40,000 citizenship applications.⁴https://www.imidaily.com/europe/turkish-cip-raised-us15-billion-from-40000-applications-says-former-interior-minister/

CBI programs could only gain such momentum thanks to the acceptance of dual citizenship, which means that investors do not have to give up their original citizenship. Some of the most popular residence-by-investment programs are offered by countries where naturalization offers access to high-quality passports, such as Portugal, Canada, Greece and the United States. For many investors, the ultimate goal is not just residency but the option of a second passport—ideally one that unlocks visa-free travel, EU access, and a Plan B for their families.⁵Surak, Kristin. 2021. “Millionaire Mobility and the Sale of Citizenship”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47(1):166–189.

From the perspective of individuals, dual citizenship offers a practical response to the global hierarchy of citizenship value. A person’s citizenship determines their access to rights, opportunities, and mobility—both within their own country and beyond. Given the vast disparities in practical value between different passports, dual citizenship is not just a matter of identity or loyalty; it is also a source of rights, opportunities and mobility.⁶Harpaz, Yossi. 2019. Citizenship 2.0: Dual Nationality as a Global Asset. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Furthermore, in an increasingly unstable world, a second passport is perceived as a hedge against uncertainty. Recent years have seen a series of crises that sent people “running for exits,” including the Chinese repression in Hong Kong in 2019-2020, the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ongoing crisis in Venezuela. Dual citizenship has allowed many thousands escape political repression or war. And each new crisis motivates more people in the countries at risk to expend efforts and capital to secure such “insurance policies.” Tens of thousands of wealthy Chinese have invested in residence programs in Canada, Australia, Europe and the United States—programs that could allow them to eventually obtain a second passport.⁷Harpaz, Yossi. 2022. “One foot on shore: An analysis of global millionaires’ demand for U.S. investor visas”. British Journal of Sociology, 73(3): 554–570; Liu-Farrer, Gracia. 2016. “Migration as Class-based Consumption: The Emigration of the Rich in Contemporary China”. The China Quarterly, 226, June 2016, 499–518. More recently (and surprisingly), demand for CBI and RBI programs among Americans has also grown sharply, driven by political polarization, tax concerns, and a desire to hedge against risk.

The multiple disruptions the world is facing are pushing people to move from planning to action and start working on a second citizenship. In that sense, the legal shift toward accepting dual citizenship has enabled very real demographic and geographic shifts.

Dual citizenship is no longer the exception—its acceptance has become a norm. For states, it is a strategic instrument to engage diasporas, attract capital, and shape identity politics. For individuals, it is a tool to secure access, mitigate risk, and improve life chances. The rise of investment migration is a clear expression of this new logic, one where national membership is increasingly decoupled from residence, identity, and emotional attachment. This is not the end of nationalism or the erosion of borders. But it is a sign that citizenship, once a rigid and exclusive bond, has entered the era of flexibility and choice. As the world becomes increasingly uncertain, both supply and demand for dual citizenship are expected to continue growing.