Abstract (eng)
The political transition in Bulgaria has resulted in a curious social phenomenon - during the last
16 years more than 200,000 foreign born ethnic Bulgarians have acquired Bulgarian citizenship.
This could be hardly deemed a coincidence, as the same period has been marked by Bulgaria
achieving economic stabilization and declaring Euro-Atlantic orientation. Whilst bearing this
in mind, the increased interest in the Bulgarian citizenship could nonetheless be related to
various side factors that can be studied through qualitative content analysis methods.
Arguably, the main reason for the proliferation of this process is Bulgaria’s EU membership.
On one hand, this membership directly causes the attractiveness of holding the country’s
citizenship to increase, and, on the other hand, the acquisition of a Bulgarian passport is
indirectly linked to the EU-affiliation efforts of the countries which applicants originally come
from.
Other associated factors and considerations that potentially affect this phenomenon and that are
henceforth studied are the nature of the citizen application process and the wider social
consequences for both Bulgaria and the countries of origin of the applicants. Another research
objective is to explore the motivation of the applicants for Bulgarian citizenship, which could
vary between antagonistic motives, opposing the symbolic to the practical ones. Yet another
point of discussion in this paper are the factors which lead to the ups and downs in the numbers
of approved applications, as well as unexploited possibilities.
The findings of the research project indicate that the Bulgarian passport will keep its
attractiveness short- and midterm, until origin countries’ eventual accession to the EU. The
paper also finds that the acquisition of Bulgarian citizenship could be used as a remedy against
the demographic crisis. A further finding is that the willingness among the Bulgarian
communities to move to Bulgaria with their obtaining of a Bulgarian passport differs depending
on which foreign country they come from. Further distinctions between the separate Bulgarian
communities, based on their home country, mark another interesting findings.