The Exit Mindset: What Our Citizenship Data Reveals About the American Psyche
- Published on March 20, 2025
- 10 min read
1. What We're Measuring Isn't Just Citizenship
At LuxCitizenship, we’ve helped more than 2,450 Americans reclaim Luxembourg nationality since 2018. But behind every application, there’s another story — one less about ancestry and more about agency. What started as a genealogical service became a data-rich observatory on one of the most underreported stories of the decade: the psychological shift in how Americans view belonging, mobility, and identity.
In recent years, dual citizenship has moved from heritage curiosity to strategic planning — a personal hedge against uncertainty. And since late 2024, our numbers confirm what our clients have long been whispering: something fundamental is shifting in the American psyche.
2. The Data Tells a Clearer Story Than the News Cycle
Let’s be precise.
2024 closed with 1,201 eligibility inquiries for Luxembourg dual citizenship — a 52% increase over our previous annual average of 792.
In just the first two months of 2025, we’ve already received 390 inquiries — on pace to double last year’s record.
From October 21, 2024 to March 6, 2025, we logged 700 inquiries and 279 new clients, a 131% increase in inquiries and a 42% increase in conversions over the same period the year before.
And the volume is only part of the picture. What’s more revealing is the language people use when they reach out.
We analyzed 1,500 open-text responses to the question, “I want to become a citizen of Luxembourg because…”, using NLP and sentiment analysis tools. Before the U.S. presidential election in 2024, responses were rooted in family stories and travel aspirations. The average sentiment was mildly positive — 0.184 on a normalized scale.
After the election, something snapped. Sentiment scores ticked up to 0.195, but the intensity and urgency spiked. Keywords like “stability,” “escape,” “safety,” “democracy,” and “uncertainty” surged — often used in emotionally charged, future-oriented language.
These aren’t just numbers. They’re a quantified reflection of a deep psychological shift: from heritage to exit strategy.
3. From Dual Citizens to Dual Mindsets
What emerges from the data is a new kind of identity — a dual mindset, where individuals are not just seeking a second passport, but a second framework for life.
For some, Luxembourg is symbolic. For others, it’s tactical. Either way, dual citizenship is no longer just about honoring the past — it’s about engineering personal resilience in a time of institutional instability. These clients are not disengaged from American life. Many still vote, pay taxes, and maintain U.S. ties. But they are consciously diversifying their national identity.
And they’re doing it at scale — enough to suggest that American emigration is not a fringe trend, but an underreported demographic movement in formation.
4. Why Data Alone Isn't Enough — And Why We Built AER
It was exactly this combination — high-velocity data and high-emotion narratives — that led me to launch the American Emigration Revue (AER). Our data showed the change long before the New York Times picked it up in September 2024, in their now-famous article “The American Voters Leaving U.S. Politics.” But traditional media couldn’t connect the dots the way we could.
Through AER, we’re building a framework to do just that — to bridge hard data, international policy, and migration narratives. We collect stats from foreign ministries, track press in multiple languages, and align them with the sentiment analysis we’ve pioneered through our eligibility test system.
Where others see anecdotes, we see indicators. Where others see flukes, we see signals of a generational trend.
5. This Isn't Brain Drain — It's Identity Realignment
Our client profiles include high-net-worth individuals, but also teachers, tech workers, artists, and single parents. They are not always “leaving” the U.S. permanently. Many are positioning themselves — building options.
We’ve tracked patterns like:
- A 3x increase in applications from swing states post-election.
- Significant growth from applicants under 40, especially in remote-friendly fields.
- A rise in clients pursuing not just Luxembourgish but Portuguese residency, French long-stay visas, and even Japanese cultural visas — often after starting with Luxembourg as a legal foothold.
The profile is widening. The infrastructure of American identity is becoming transnational by design.
6. Where This All Leads
We are now operating at a convergence point:
- Historical citizenship reclamation through ancestry.
- Quantitative modeling of emigration motivations and behavior.
- A cultural reframing of what it means to be American in an unstable world.
That’s where I’ve found myself — not just as a service provider, but as a researcher, analyst, and interpreter of a migration story that’s still unfolding.
The numbers will continue to climb. The motivations will continue to evolve. But what stays constant is our goal: to provide clarity in a time of movement, to connect stories to systems, and to frame the American exit mindset as a real, observable social phenomenon — not a curiosity.