Closing a Backdoor to Dual Citizenship: The German Citizenship Law Reform of 2000 and the Abolishment of the "Domestic Clause".

Swantje Falcke,Maarten Vink

doi:10.3389/fsoc.2020.536940

Swantje Falcke, Maarten Vink

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2020.536940

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Abstract

The German citizenship law underwent a paradigmatic amendment in 2000. One often overlooked change of this reform was the abolishment of the domestic clause (“Inlandsklausel”) that implied a substantial restriction to de facto dual citizenship acceptance. Combining data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (waves 1993–2006) with original data on origin country policies on dual citizenship and citizenship reacquisition, we analyse the impact of the abolishment of the domestic clause on naturalization rates. We apply a difference-in-difference design to investigate the causal impact of this element of the reform which has remained under-studied. We do not find an impact of the abolishment of the domestic clause on naturalization rates, neither among the general migrant population, nor among Turkish migrants who are alleged to be targeted specifically by this reform. These results suggest that a more restrictive approach to dual citizenship did not dissuade migrants from acquiring German citizenship after 2000.

Highlights

Over the last decades immigrants’ naturalization propensity has been of growing interest to academics as well as politicians
The analysis focuses on first generation immigrants who arrived in Germany before 1998 as they still have the possibility to naturalize within the observation period
This paper we set out to study the impact of the abolishment of the domestic clause on naturalization rates

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Over the last decades immigrants’ naturalization propensity has been of growing interest to academics as well as politicians. As discussed in section The German Citizenship Law Reform of 2000, the reform of 2000 included the abolishment of the domestic clause but simultaneously reduced the residency requirement, introduced ius soli and facilitated dual citizenship for EU citizens under the condition of reciprocity of treatment. This applies for (1) Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, and United Kingdom since 2000; (2) Sweden since 2001; (3) Finland since 2003, and (4) Cyprus, Hungary, Malta and Slovakia as new EU member states since 2004 (Vink and De Groot, 2016). Such observations underline the relevance of dual citizenship for Turks in Germany, even when the abolishment of the domestic clause did not lower naturalization rates

CONCLUSION

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Findings

ETHICS STATEMENT