Floris Peters

The ecology of immigrant naturalization: a life course approach in the context of institutional conditions

ABSTRACT Traditionally, immigrants’ propensity to naturalize is attributed to individual characteristics and the origin country. Recently scholars increasingly recognise that naturalisation decisions do not take place in a vacuum: they are conditioned both by the individual life course of immigrants, such as the age at migration and family situation, as well as the opportunity structure set by citizenship policies of the destination country. Yet it is less clear what impact specific policy changes have, and to whom these changes matter most. In this paper we address these questions by analysing citizenship acquisition among first generation immigrants in the Netherlands in light of a restriction in citizenship policy in 2003. We employ unique micro-level longitudinal data from Dutch municipal population registers between 1995 until 2012, which allow us to track naturalisation among different immigration cohorts. We find evidence that indeed naturalisation is part of a larger life course trajectory: immigrants who arrive at a younger age in the Netherlands naturalise more often and so do immigrants with a native partner, or a foreign-born partner who also naturalises. Policy also matters: migrants naturalise later and less often under more restrictive institutional conditions, especially migrants from less developed and politically unstable countries of origin.

Anticipating the citizenship premium: before and after effects of immigrant naturalisation on employment

ABSTRACT Can citizenship improve the economic integration of immigrants, and if so, how? Scholars traditionally understand a citizenship premium in the labour market, besides access to restricted jobs, as the result of a positive signal of naturalisation towards employers. While we do not discard these mechanisms, we argue that explanations should also take into account that migrants anticipate rewards and opportunities of naturalisation by investing in their human capital development. We thus expect to observe improved employment outcomes already before the acquisition of citizenship. We use micro-level register data from Statistics Netherlands from 1999 until 2011 (N = 94,320) to test this expectation. Results show a one-time boost in the probability of having employment after naturalisation, consistent with the prevalent notion of positive signalling. However, we find that the employment probability of naturalising migrants already develops faster during the years leading up to citizenship acquisition, even when controlling for endogeneity of naturalisation. We conclude that it is not just the positive signal of citizenship that improves employment opportunities, but also migrants’ human capital investment in anticipation of naturalisation.