This episode of The IR thinker features a wide-ranging conversation with Professor Dimitry Kochenov on what it really means to “belong” in a world where citizenship is conditional, unequal, and sometimes absent altogether. We unpack the paradox of citizenship as both a legal fiction and a lived necessity, probing whether institutions truly “grant” citizenship, what it means to live as stateless, and whether “real” EU citizenship exists beyond the rhetoric. The discussion traces how EU citizenship can simultaneously empower individuals, through mobility, rights, and protection, while also hollowing out democratic accountability in member states. We examine “market citizenship” and the monetisation of legal status, asking whether citizenship-by-investment schemes that effectively sell access to the EU should be abolished, and close with a critical look at multiple citizenship: is it an emerging path towards global justice or simply an additional layer of privilege for the already mobile?

Dimitry Kochenov

Professor Dimitry Kochenov is a leading scholar of global citizenship and constitutionalism, with a particular focus on the rule of law, EU federalism, and external relations law. He heads the Rule of Law research group at the Democracy Institute of Central European University in Budapest and teaches Global Citizenship at CEU’s Department of Legal Studies in Vienna. Through his work on statelessness, EU citizenship, and the political economy of “citizenship for sale”, he has become a key voice in contemporary debates on how legal status shapes human dignity, mobility, and the evolving architecture of international order.

Publications:

EU enlargement and the failure of conditionality: pre-accession conditionality in the fields of democracy and the rule of law

Citizenship

Citizenship and residence sales: rethinking the boundaries of belonging

Ukraine and the EU enlargement: what is the law and which is the way forward?

Content

00:00 - Introduction

02:02 - The Paradox: Can Institutions Grant Citizenship?

06:23 - Living Stateless: Can Humans Exist Without Citizenship?

16:56 - Does “Real” EU Citizenship Actually Exist?

36:06 - Democracy’s Double Edge: How EU Citizenship Both Empowers and Undermines

50:26 - Market Citizenship: When Human Worth Becomes Economic Value

56:39 - Citizenship for Sale: Should the EU abolish those schemes?

01:08:06 - One Citizenship or Many? The Multiple Citizenship Debate

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