30 R. Barbulescu Here is one qualifier: many citizens of the rich countries benefit from similar privileged access to citizenship or residence in less developed countries around the world. They call themselves expats instead of migrants and often need not go through the normal immigration route. A basic state pension from the UK, for instance, can make one a particularly well-off person in the Global South. The citizenship-by-investment scheme just mirrors a worldwide state of affairs, but it is more visible because of the high threshold of capital needed for access. The fact that this matter has only now entered the citizenship debate indicates how heavily theoretical and ethical debates build on Western cases. My second remark has to do with the profound transformation of the institution of citizenship. My point here is that citizenship-by-investment largely contradicts the very recent efforts of states to re-substantiate citizenship through tests and integration requirements (see the earlier debate hosted by this Forum2). Waiving these requirements for the ultra-rich raises serious doubts over the credentials of the previous citizenship reforms and states will need to justify why civic knowledge and other integration requirements are needed or useful and provide proof that they are something more than a filter to make immigration more selective. The third point has to do with the fact that using capital as the sole condition for citizenship for investors (waiving requirements such as residence, language skills or ancestry) departs from traditional foundations of (national) citizenship which tended to privilege cultural and social ties. It also marks a break with the historically younger project of social citizenship which went in the opposite direction and sought to incorporate the economically disenfranchised into the citizenry3. As Peter Spiro argues in 2 3 Bauböck, R. & C. Joppke (eds.) (2010), ‘How Liberal are Citizenship Tests?’, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, EUDO Citizenship Observatory Working Paper 2010/41, Florence: European University Institute, available at http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/13956/RSCAS_2010_41corr. pdf?sequence=3. See Marshall, T. H. (1973 [1950]), ‘Citizenship and Social Class’, in Class, Citizenship, and Social Development, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press; Soysal, Y. (2012), ‘Citizenship, Immigration and the European Social Project: Rights and Obligations of the Individuality’, British Journal of Sociology 36 (1): 1-21.