In March 2017, Nele Vos, a narrative experience designer living and working in Berlin, participated in the Who Are We? Tate Exchange project with an installation titled, Citizenshop/Citizenship. In the midst of the ‘refugee crisis’, Brexit, and the increasing salience of xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiments in both Europe and the UK, the installation drew attention to the less visible processes by which the wealthiest of individuals can acquire citizenship(s) by investment. Effectively, as Nele’s installation explored, citizenship(s) can be ‘bought’, with many European countries, including the UK, ‘selling’ visas, residence permits and citizenships to those who can afford to invest large sums of money in the country.
The installation drew attention to the less visible processes by which the wealthiest of individuals can acquire citizenship by investment.
As the citizenship by investment industry grows, the lack of transparency and oversight over who can ‘buy’ citizenship is starting to raise questions. Yet little has been done to explore the citizenship by investment industry in the context of broader, contemporary debates on migration and asylum. Following the success of the Tate Exchange project and the interest generated by Nele’s installation, Nele and her design partner at Goller&Vos, Alexander Goller, began collaborating with Agnes Czajka and the Open University (OU) to develop an interactive, e-learning module designed to explore some of the inequalities inherent in access to citizenship and freedom of movement. Focusing on the UK, the module, which will be freely available on the OU’s OpenLean platform, will explore some of the contradictions and fundamental inequalities of citizenship and asylum regimes.
