22 • International Journal of Refugee Law, 2026, Vol. 00, Issue 00 Emma Haddad, ‘The External Dimension of EU Refugee Policy: A New Approach to Asylum?’ (2008) 43 Government and Opposition 190, 201–202. 163 See, eg Mollie Gerver, ‘Moral Refugee Markets’ (2018) 11(1) Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric 45. 164 Magdalena Zabrocka, ‘The Sale of EU Citizenship and the “Law” Behind It’ (2023) 5 The Statelessness & Citizenship Review 44, 47. 165 ibid 50–51. 166 Case C‐181/23 European Commission v Republic of Malta ECLI:EU:C:2025:283, [99]. 167 See, eg Manby (n 98) 60. 162 Downloaded from academic.oup.com/ijrl/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ijrl/eeag028/8767365 by guest on 08 October 2026 asylum.162 These agreements are also enabling the financialization and commodification of the state functions of border control, asylum processing, and protection, leading some scholars to characterize these agreements as giving rise to ‘refugee markets’.163 This deterritorialization is also apparent in the context of bilateral responses to statelessness. The agreement with the Comoros was only conceivable because of the existence of a broader trend in the commodification of citizenship, occurring as a result of the global proliferation of citizenship by investment schemes over the past decade.164 Indeed, the legislation adopted by the Comorian Parliament to give effect to this arrangement was framed in terms of citizenship by investment (‘a law for economic citizenship’). Citizenship by investment schemes often do not impose a residency requirement on prospective citizens, or if they do, such requirements can be easily evaded (for example, by the applicant indicating a number of days of intended residence on the territory without actually fulfilling this commitment, or through renting a room in a property on the territory without actually residing there).165 In imposing such minimal residency requirements, this new pathway to citizenship is contributing to an erosion of the need for a territorial link or connection between a state and a citizen. A recent decision by the Court of Justice European Union affirmed that Malta’s citizenship by investment scheme was contrary to provisions relating to the citizenship of the European Union, in particular the requirement for a ‘special relationship of solidarity and good faith’ between EU Member States and their nationals,166 perhaps marking the beginning of a turning point in the deterritorialization and commodification of citizenship.167 Although the agreement between the UAE and the Comoros involved the mass purchase of passports by a wealthy state, and not the ad hoc purchase by wealthy individuals common to most citizenship by investment schemes, it also contributed to a deterritorialization of the protection obligations owed by states to their nationals. This was because the Comorian passports were granted without a connection to the territory of the Comoros, in that the recipients had no preexisting link to Comoros, and without a right to enter and reside in that country, there was no possibility for such a connection to develop. Simultaneously, the grant of the Comorian passports ignored the longstanding connection of the bidun to the territory of the Gulf States. Thus, the bilateral statelessness agreements contributed to a dissolving of the link between territorial presence and the grant of citizenship. The bilateral agreements discussed in this article emerge from attempts to evade obligations that derive from territorial presence, and their adoption is contributing to a weakening of the link between presence on territory and the triggering of states’ protection obligation under international law. By detaching citizenship and asylum from territory, these agreements are also paving the way from a legal protection-based response to a market-based response by states towards stateless people, asylum seekers, and irregular migrants.