
Dive into the ‘Passports-for-purchase’ phenomenon and the reasons why countries offer their citizenship for sale

Join Samantha Balaton-Chrimes at the next Global Citizenship seminar series
In considering how best to manage diversity in democratic societies, a core and ever-contested question is whether and how identity classifications should be used. In this seminar, I bring to these debates research from a book-length project on the use of bureaucratic, legal and symbolic ethnic classifications in Kenya.
This project analyses the forms of ethnic knowledge produced by the colonial and postcolonial Kenyan states: boundaries, censuses, citizenship registration and legal categories. The analysis results in two core arguments: first, that ethnic pluralism is possible, and classifications can serve that project, and; second, that ethnic knowledge in Kenya is characterised by cultivated vagueness, which is a core part of what makes it capable of contributing to pluralism, and not only competition, division and conflict.
Among other contributions, this work demonstrates how a link between ethnicity and citizenship – symbolically and bureaucratically, if not legally – can facilitate inclusion for stateless and other marginalised groups.

Join Luuk van der Baaren in this seminar series and explore the evolution, structure, and geographic range of Free Movement of People Regimes (FMPRs).