Global Mobility Corridors for the Ultra-Rich. The Neoliberal Transformation of Citizenship Roxana Barbulescu The problem with investment citizenship ain’t that it is for sale, the problem is global inequality. Citizenship-by-investment schemes do not themselves produce injustice but they are unjust because they build on pre-existing large disparities in the world: If all countries were equal in living conditions would the scheme be objectionable? If the answer is no, as I think it is, then the source of injustice is global inequality rather than policies that do not themselves produce injustice. In the real world, however, citizenship-by-investment together with similar schemes for residence opens global mobility corridors for the ultra-rich. In what follows I discuss how investor citizenship impacts on international migration and how it alters the institution of citizenship. I end by calling for more systematic analysis of the political conditions under which this transformation of citizenship has come about. From an international migration perspective citizenship-by-investment is a means for opening borders, even if only for very few affluent individuals (and their families). In abstract terms, the logic is the same as with the different competitive schemes for high-skilled migrants. The latter use talent, reputation, skill, work experience, previous salary and even age as proxies for admitting only those who can make an important contribution1. So do investors through their investments. The two schemes are also similar in their consequences: they both immobilise the less well-off individuals. The twin phenomena of global competition for the worlds’ best and brightest and for the richest correspond to the nationalisation of poverty and the confinement of less well-off citizens within their national borders. For me, this indicates that the questions the scheme raises are indeed about global social justice and it is this problem on which states need to focus their efforts. 1 Shachar, A. (2006), ‘The Race for Talent: Highly Skilled Migrants and Competitive Immigration Regimes’, New York University Law Review 81 (1): 148–206. © The Author(s) 2018 R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating Transformations of National Citizenship, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92719-0_6 29