The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen

The buying and selling of citizenship has become a legitimate, thriving business in just a few years. Entrepreneurs are renouncing America and Europe in favor of tax havens in the Caribbean with the help of a cottage industry of lawyers, bankers, and consultants that specialize in expatriation. But as journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamian discovered, the story of twenty-first century citizenship is bigger than millionaires buying their second or third passport. When she learned that mysterious middlemen had persuaded the Comoro Islands to turn to selling citizenship as a new source of revenue, she decided to follow the money trail to the Middle East. There, she found that officials in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates had bulk-ordered passports for their bidoon, or stateless population, transforming these men, women, and children without countries into Comorian citizens practically overnight. In her timely and eye-opening first book, Abrahamian travels the globe to meet these willing and unwitting "cosmopolites," or citizens of the world, who show us how transactional and unpredictable national citizenship in the twenty-first century can be.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Published: 11/10/2015
ISBN: 9780990976363
Pages: 162
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.40h x 4.90w x 0.50d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 09/14/2015
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2015
Library Journal 10/15/2015 pg. 103
New York Times Book Review 01/17/2016 pg. 12
New York Times Book Review 01/24/2016 pg. 22