Eluding National Boundaries: A Case Study of Commodified Citizenship and the Transnational Capitalist Class

• In Event: 1453 - Regular Session on Development

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, the Caribbean island of Dominica has been effectively commodifying its citizenship – pay x number of dollars and you can have all the rights of citizenship of the island nation without any of the traditional duties and obligations. Ostensibly established as a means to aid the country in its efforts to move away from a mono-agricultural economy, this article demonstrates that in reality, the commodified citizenship program best serves as a tool for the transnational capitalist class which need to work around political restrictions on their cross-border movements. In 2004, the island’s government began an aggressive marketing campaign to promote the flailing program, to the high-level business communities in Asia and China in particular, with striking results. With a growing effort to impede movement across countries and re-entrenchment of national border across the world efforts to penetrate national border boundaries and established systems of exclusions through the visa processes have prompted creative and alternative routes for cross-border mobility. The contention here, is that commodified citizenship is just one such creative alternative routes and is especially ingenious as it is fully legal and uses the very institutions that seek to hinder mobility.

Author

• Marilyn Grell-Brisk, Universite de Neuchatel