Prof. Ayelet Shachar on using citizenship as an Olympic recruiting tool

As the 2012 London Olympics approach, Nexus magazine takes a look at the touchy issue of citizenship as a recruitment tool, and its increasing use and abuse in the worldwide hunt for triumph ("Picking Winners," Spring/Summer 2012).

Prof. Ayelet Shachar has looked at this issue in depth, arguing that passports are becoming a powerful form of international currency. Elite athletes who have no real ties or connections to the countries that covet them are being wooed and enticed—offered the precious prize of citizenship in exchange for a whiff of gold. 

"There's something deeply ironic about the notion of saying 'We grant you citizenship precisely because we care about our nation's position in the world,' even if you have not actually complied with what is typically required of someone applying for citizenship," she says.

Read the story in Nexus.

The story has been republished on the University of Toronto News website.

It is the subject of "Is elite immigration fair game?" on the Research Matters blog of the Council of Ontario Universities.

Prof. Shachar also explores the subject in the New York Times in "Serious Moral Quandaries" (July 27, 2012).