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

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

“…Indeed, citizenship particularly matters if acquired early in the settlement process. This will be particularly important for marginalised migrant groups for whom restrictive citizenship policies represent significant and daunting obstacles, such as those from less developed and politically unstable countries of origin (Peters, Vink, and Schmeets 2015;Vink, Prokic-Breuer, and Dronkers 2013). These are also the very migrants who generally hold a weak position in the labour market, and thus need citizenship most.…”

“…To pass this test, migrants have to be able to read, write and speak Dutch at level A2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and possess sufficient knowledge of the Dutch society. These requirements constitute a significant hurdle to naturalisation, particularly for migrants who are most interested to naturalise (Peters, Vink, and Schmeets 2015). As such, citizenship acquisition is not simply an isolated and abrupt legal status transition, but rather a process that requires careful planning and preparation, starting the moment a migrant decides to naturalise in the future.…”

“…More specifically, we compare migrant cohorts 1996-1997 and 2001-2002. In light of the residence requirement of 5 years, migrants from the former cohort group became eligible for citizenship acquisition prior to the policy change, whereas the latter group had to perform the naturalisation test (see Peters, Vink, and Schmeets [2015] for a similar approach). If the increasing coefficients prior to naturalisation are principally due to the fact that employment provides the ability to meet the financial requirements, than we would not expect the positive labour market outcomes prior to naturalisation to differ before and after the introduction of the naturalisation test.…”

“…When a migrant has one or more children below the age of 18 in the household, we classify them as having children. Furthermore, given substantial differences in the propensity to naturalise between migrant groups (Peters, Vink, and Schmeets 2015;Vink, Prokic-Breuer, and Dronkers 2013), we perform separate analyses for migrants from different origin contexts, focusing on the level of economic development and EU-membership of origin countries. Although most studies in the literature focus on origin regions (e.g.…”

Economic Theories of Citizenship Ascension

“…Language requirements may also have differing effects: greater required language facility may increase immigrants' economic premium, whereas a more rigorous language requirement can discourage potential candidates to apply and encourage them to leave the host country for another country with lower or no language requirements. Finally, the literature is not conclusive on the correlation between dual citizenship policies by immigrant sending and host countries, and naturalization rates: while some studies show that the absence of dual citizenship provisions in either the host country or the immigrant's sending country would reduce citizenship ascension rates (see, example.g., Peters et al 2016or Vink et al 2013)-which would ultimately also decrease the size of the economic premium derived from naturalization-others conclude the opposite (e.g., Helgertz and Bevelander 2016). One of the main hypotheses posed by Bevelander and DeVoretz states that potential immigrant citizens will get higher or lower economic benefits from naturalization depending on whether they have been through a double selection process or not.…”