You can be born into it, you can earn it, and you can lose it. Increasingly, you can also invest your way into it.
The "it" is citizenship of a particular country, and it is a more fluid concept than ever before. Go back 50 years, and it was uncommon for countries to allow dual citizenship, but it is now almost universal.
More than half of the world's nations now have citizenship-through-investment programmes. According to one expert, Swiss lawyer Christian Kalin, it is now a global industry worth $25bn (£20bn) a year.
Only Germany and France have maintained their commitment to take migrants under distribution pacts reached when the small EU nation permitted their disembarkation from humanitarian rescue ships, according to Malta’s interior minister. Läs mer...