Does a liberal citizenship policy decrease the citizenship premium?

In this paper we assess the claim that making citizenship relatively easily available to immigrants defeats the purpose of using naturalization as a tool to further integration. We do so by analyzing the relation between being naturalized and having paid employment among male immigrants in 16 European destination countries. In line with the bulk of the literature, we find that there is a positive relationship between citizenship and the probability of employment among foreign-born male residents, though only if they originate from less developed countries or migrated for non-economic reasons. For these immigrants, crucially, we find that this ‘citizenship premium’ is significantly stronger in countries where the conditions and procedures to acquire citizenship are less demanding. We conclude that, for the most vulnerable immigrants on the labour market, the positive signalling function of citizenship is not lost by making it more easily accessible. Read more...