"[A] fascinating study of how people-and their capital-seek to move around a world that is at
once hugely interconnected and driven by inequities...definitive detailed and unusually
nuanced." -Atossa Araxia Abrahamian Foreign Affairs The first comprehensive on-the-ground
investigation of the global market for citizenship examining the wealthy elites who buy
passports the states and brokers who sell them and the normalization of a once shadowy
practice. Our lives are in countless ways defined by our citizenship. The country we belong
to affects our rights our travel possibilities and ultimately our chances in life. Obtaining
a new citizenship is rarely easy. But for those with the means-billionaires like Peter Thiel
and Jho Low but also countless unknown multimillionaires-it's just a question of price. More
than a dozen countries many of them small islands in the Mediterranean Caribbean and South
Pacific sell citizenship to 50 000 people annually. Through six years of fieldwork on four
continents Kristin Surak discovered how the initially dubious sale of passports has
transformed into a full-blown citizenship industry that thrives on global inequalities. Some
"investor citizens" hope to parlay their new passport into visa-free travel-or use it as a
stepping stone to residence in countries like the United States. Other buyers take out a new
citizenship as an insurance policy or to escape state control at home. Almost none though
intend to move to their selected country and live among their new compatriots whose
relationship with these global elites is complex. A groundbreaking study of a contentious
practice that has become popular among the nouveaux riches The Golden Passport takes readers
from the details of the application process to the geopolitical hydraulics of the citizenship
industry. It's a business that thrives on uncertainty and imbalances of power between big
globalized economies and tiny states desperate for investment. In between are the fascinating
stories of buyers brokers and sellers all ready to profit from the citizenship trade.
