2024/12/02 by Elena Borisova · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Cyprus History, Politics, Society #Island Studies and Pacific Affairs
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/sea2.12335
openalex publication_date 2024/12/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Passport Island is a unique study of global economic citizenship as a specific type of commodity. While this phenomenon has already sparked heated debates among political scholars and economists, what makes this research a valuable contribution to citizenship studies is its ethnographic approach. Tracing the establishment of the Citizenship by Investment Program (CIP) in Cyprus and engaging with various actors involved in its making allows for analysis of global citizenship as a locally produced phenomenon. What does granting citizenship to wealthy non-Europeans mean for a small post-colonial country such as the Republic of Cyprus? Fashioned as a fast-track way out of the banking crisis of 2013 by the political and business elites, the CIP significantly reshaped the urban landscape of cities like Limassol, pushed the rental market through the roof, and caused discontent among the locals. As an ethnographic inquiry into the workings of the golden citizenship scheme in Cyprus, Passport Island is concerned with the global repercussions of this local phenomenon. How does jus pecuniae, the rule of money, as the basis for welcoming strangers into a polity challenge our perception of citizenship as an institution rooted in certain values? While existing debates in sociology and political science engage with the changing meaning of citizenship and portray the loss of its sentimental value as an inevitable process, Rakopoulos shifts our conceptual imagination to questions of global political economy. Focusing on golden passports' post-colonial origins and the uneven outcomes they produce, he points to the dialectical nature of this new global form of citizenship. In an international system of unequal passport rankings, the golden passport allows a few privileged individuals to exploit existing inequalities within their nation states, while also contributing to growing inequalities in the countries with golden passport industries. The first two chapters lay the groundwork for the book's ethnographic analysis of the Cyprus CIP. They show that it is impossible to understand the current position of the small post-colonial island on the global scale without looking into the historical tensions around the Republic's statehood and economic history. Becoming an important node in the global money flows resulted in the formation of a “vernacular global consciousness” among Cyprus' inhabitants that facilitated but also resisted the citizenship-for-investment policies. The citizenship by investment policy that emerged is a form of “offshoring by other means” that resulted from the moral panic associated with the banking crisis of 2013. The two ethnographic chapters, “Makers” and “Takers,” offer the reader a glimpse into the making of the CIP from the bottom up. In “Makers,” Rakopoulos introduces us to the big and small fish of the CIP world, including investment lawyers, auditors and real estate agents. He shows that various forms of brokerage typically exploit established connections with the Russophone world of “takers” for golden passports. Many of passport brokers possess linguistic capital, share the sense of religious and cultural affinity with their Russian clients, or have established bonds of friendship and trust. In this chapter, we see that this is clearly a masculine world. Still, women have place in the golden passport industry too, and Rakopoulos' book would have benefited from delving more into their experiences, as well as feminist perspectives on citizenship and global inequalities. The chapter on “takers” paints a broader picture of Russophone communities involved in the golden passport industry and their ideas about its elite clients. And yet, the takers themselves mostly stay in the shadow. It appears that Rakopoulos did not directly engage with the elites who hold golden passports, and the dark picture he paints of their lives in “passport villas” appears to be drawn from his interlocutors in the industry. As a result, the chapter reinforces various stereotypes about bored housewives, isolation, and violence. My sense is that this ethnographic account would have been greatly enhanced with deeper reflection on absence and secrecy. Moreover, the book could use more detail on the author's positionality and his relationships with his interlocutors, some of whom he appears to dislike. I would have also welcomed some consideration of the limitations of the interview as a method for trying to access elite populations. The last chapter and conclusion of Passport Island return us to the argument of citizenship by investment as the continuation of offshoring by other means—here, citizenship has an inherent connection with property ownership. A comparative overview of the CIPs around the world—from longstanding locations like St. Kitts and Nevis to new ones like Moldova—positions the Cypriot case within the broader system of global citizenship as a post-colonial commodity produced locally. This shows how large issues are indeed always rooted in small places and thus should be analyzed through careful engagement with the dynamics on the ground. Overall, Passport Island is a compelling reflection on the question of what is happening with citizenship in the age of post-neoliberal and post-national utopias and how these developments are bound up with global inequalities. The book will be of interest to scholars of citizenship, economic anthropologists, and anthropologists of the state in Europe and beyond.