Read Russian passportization as an informal practice

This paper proposes an analysis of Russian passportization in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine through the lens of informality theories. Informality not only emerges in the state procedures to confer passports in violation of international law but also as a demand-driven practice of a population when people ask for passports of other nations for various reasons, including to enhance their standard of living. While there is comprehensive literature on the topic, there is not an extensive examination of passportization using informality theories. Referring to the passportization practices perpetuated by the authorities of the Russian Federation, specifically, Russian passportization is an aggressive strategy of granting citizenship to many people in another country and issuing this document for them for purposes different from those declared. Firstly, informality results in Russian violations of international law as the links between the naturalized person and the Russian state are often missing, and those procedures are ad hoc and non-transparent. Furthermore, Russia intervenes in sovereign states where there is domestic conflict to influence another state's internal politics. As the Ukrainian case demonstrates, passportization became an informal pressure tool to control and obstruct the conflict resolution process. Furthermore, from a bottom-up perspective, asking for a foreign passport is an informal practice, as the individual goes beyond the laws of the central state, which has the right to confer citizenship. Informality is defined as an action carried out by a single person or a group of people that ultimately eludes the state or other prominent authority, which regulates that group's or society's way of life (Polese, 2021). Therefore, passportization can be seen from the bottom-up perspective and not as merely a supply-based state policy but as a demand-driven practice, where the willingness of citizens to obtain a Russian passport plays a determinative role. Indeed, having a determined passport can provide essential benefits. In the context under examination, the Russian passport can offer more advantages than a de facto state passport or even one from one of the recognized countries. For example, Russian passports allow for migration, studying, working, avoiding discrimination, travelling into the Russian Federation, a higher pension, and support for those involved in war crimes in the Donbas. In addition, passportization practices are surrounded by other informal methods like blackmail, cooptation, clientelism, peer pressure, the implementation of institutional façade, and selective law enforcement. To conclude, looking at the example of passportization procedures in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, the author aims to demonstrate through different levels of analysis that passportization, under many aspects, is an informal practice. Polese, A. (2021). What is informality?(mapping)“the art of bypassing the state” in Eurasian spaces-and beyond. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 1-43.