The Political and Community Context of Immigrant Naturalisation in the United States

Abstract

Becoming a citizen is a component of a larger process of immigrant incorporation into U.S. society. It is most often treated as an individual-level choice, associated with such personal characteristics as the duration of residence in the U.S., age, education, and language acquisition. This study uses microdata from Census 2000 in conjunction with other measures to examine aspects of the community and policy context that influence the choices made by individuals. The results confirm previous research on the effects of individual-level characteristics on attaining citizenship. There is also strong evidence of collective influences: both the varied political histories of immigrant groups in their home country and the political and community environment that they encounter in the U.S. have significant impacts on their propensity of naturalization.

The citizenship premium

“…A cost-benefit framework counts the automatic loss of the original citizenship as an important deterrent to naturalisation. Empirical findings in the literature, however, produce an ambiguous picture and do not universally support the hypothesis that being able to retain the citizenship of the origin country increases the propensity to naturalise in the destination country (Dronkers & Vink, 2010;Jones-Correa, 2001;Logan, Oh, & Darrah, 2012;Mazzolari, 2009;Scott, 2008;Yang, 1994).…”

“…In contrast, migrants from the European Union (EU) will be less inclined to acquire citizenship of another EU country, since the added benefit is comparatively small. Indeed, a large portion of the variation in naturalisation rates between migrant groups is explained by origin characteristics (Chiswick & Miller, 2009;Devoretz & Pivnenko, 2008;Dronkers & Vink, 2012;Helgertz & Bevelander, 2016;Logan et al, 2012;Vink et al, 2013).…”

“…Bueker, 2005;Chiswick & Miller, 2009;Jasso & Rosenzweig, 1986;Logan et al, 2012). A lack of economic freedom, political security and low standards of living in the country of origin may discourage migrants to return.…”

“…In these cases, naturalisation has relatively severe implications, such as a more permanent disconnection from one's relatives or origin country. A cost-benefit model would thus predict the toleration of dual citizenship to increase the propensity to naturalise, although empirical findings regarding the impact of dual citizenship toleration are ambiguous (Dronkers & Vink, 2012;Logan et al, 2012;Mazzolari, 2009;Scott, 2008;Yang, 1994).…”

“…Given that for a number of smaller origin countries, the dataset only includes a very limited number of migrants, we aim to capture variation at the origin country level by including general characteristics of these countries. While we do not exclude that there may be additional variation at the level of individual origin countries, on the basis of the literature we assume that these characteristics capture most of the relevant origin country variation (Chiswick & Miller, 2009;Helgertz & Bevelander, 2016;Jasso & Rosenzweig, 1986;Logan et al, 2012;Vink et al, 2013;Yang, 1994). The level of development of a country is measured using the Human Development Index (HDI), which is based on gross domestic product, as well as indicators for life expectancy and educational levels.…”