Abstract
We study the impact of naturalization on the long-term social integration of immigrants into the host country society. Despite ongoing debates about citizenship policy, we lack reliable evidence that isolates the causal effect of naturalization from the non-random selection into naturalization. We exploit the quasi-random assignment of citizenship in Swiss municipalities that used referendums to decide on naturalization applications of immigrants. Comparing otherwise similar immigrants who narrowly won or narrowly lost their naturalization referendums, we find that receiving Swiss citizenship strongly improved long-term social integration. We also find that the integration returns to naturalization are much larger for more marginalized immigrant groups and somewhat larger when naturalization occurs earlier, rather than later in the residency period. Overall, our findings support the policy paradigm arguing that naturalization is a catalyst for improving the social integration of immigrants rather than merely the crown on the completed integration process.
Highlights
Integration of immigrant populations is an urgent and fundamental policy challenge in many countries in Europe and the Americas that have experienced dramatic increases in the size and diversity of their immigrant populations in recent decades
The Stock and Yogo (2005) F-test against the null that the instrument had no effect on the treatment is about 94 for the instrumental variable (IV) model and 21 for the fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) model and much higher than the critical threshold of 10 that we need to exceed in order to avoid the problems associated with a weak instrument
Taken together these results suggest that naturalization earlier, rather than later, is more effective in terms of increasing the long term social integration of immigrants and this effect is strong in the sense that even a few years earlier can make a real difference for social long-term integration
Summary
Integration of immigrant populations is an urgent and fundamental policy challenge in many countries in Europe and the Americas that have experienced dramatic increases in the size and diversity of their immigrant populations in recent decades. In stark contrast to the political rhetoric mobilizing for limiting access to host country citizenship with longer residency periods and stricter naturalization criteria, we find that the positive effects of naturalization are larger for the most marginalized groups and when immigrants naturalize earlier, rather than later, in their residency Taken together, these findings suggest that for Switzerland—and perhaps other countries with restrictive or more restrictive naturalization regimes—marginally lowering the long residency requirements and stringent naturalization criteria might well be quite beneficial to reap the full integration gains from the citizenship policy. When interpreting our results it is important to emphasize that our estimates capture the effects of naturalization only among immigrants who have applied for citizenship Among this sample, which is arguably the most relevant for current policy, we find that naturalization promotes long-term social integration and that these effects are larger for more marginalized immigrants and those who apply earlier. Our study fills an important gap by providing evidence on the effects of naturalization in Switzerland a country where the issue of naturalization is pressing: there is an unusually large immigrant population of about 27% and heated policy debates have seen right wing parties like the Swiss People’s party mobilize against mass naturalization of immigrants
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