From capital to membership: How organizations translate citizenship through individual foreign investment in the EU and the US

Background Investment immigration programs involving individual investors, referred to here as Individual Foreign Investment (IFI) , sit at the intersection of migration governance, capital mobility, and citizenship. Although they share the basic feature of exchanging investment for legal status, public and institutional reactions to these programs differ widely across countries. This paper argues that these differences arise not only from program design, economic incentives, or investor behavior, but from how organizations interpret citizenship, classify applicants, administer procedures, and translate investment into membership. Methods This study uses qualitative document analysis of legal, administrative, and policy texts to examine how organizations interpret citizenship, classify applicants, administer procedures, and translate investment into membership. Results The paper develops an organizational translation mechanism of membership (OTM) , integrating citizenship theory with organizational translation theory. The mechanism identifies four dimensions of framing, allocation, pathways, and feedback that explain how normative conceptions of membership (inputs) are processed by organizations (mediators) into institutional outcomes (outputs). Conclusions Applying the OTM to a comparison between CBI/RBI schemes in the European Union (EU) and the EB-5 program in the United States (US) shows that the rights attached to IFI do not stem from the investment itself. Instead, they arise from how organizations translate investment capital into either a commodified or a governance-based view of membership.