Explaining the emergence of Immigrant Investment Programs

Immigrant Investment Programs (IIP’s) allow individuals to acquire residency or citizenship in another country in return for financial investments. Most of the existing literature assumes that countries are driven to implement such programs by economic incentives. Statistical evidence for these assumptions is lacking thus far. Furthermore, no study has assessed the significance of non-economic conditions in the emergence of these programs. This research reveals the underlying economic and non-economic indicators that create pathways to the presence of both high opportunity as well as low opportunity IIP’s, specifically for the European Union member states. It assesses economic conditions as identified in existing literature and draws on new insights as gathered from the National Identity Theory and the Domestic Policy Model. By applying Qualitative Comparative Analysis, this thesis identifies the necessary and sufficient conditions for the presence of high opportunity and low opportunity IIP’s and reveals that the emergence of these programs can be explained by a complex relationship between economic as well as non-economic indicators. These final indicators are the GDP size of the individual cases, the state debt, the degree of patriotism and the political orientation of the government of each case.