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Naturalization fosters the long-term political integration of immigrants

  1. Giuseppe Pietrantuonoe,f,g
  1. aDepartment of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044;
  2. bImmigration and Integration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044;
  3. cGraduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044;
  4. dDepartment of Methodology, London School of Economics, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom;
  5. eInstitute of Political Science, University of Zurich, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland;
  6. fMigration Policy Lab, University of Zurich, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland;
  7. gGraduate School of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Mannheim, 68159 Mannheim, Germany

  1. Edited by Mary C. Waters, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved August 19, 2015 (received for review October 1, 2014)

Significance

The political integration of immigrant minorities is one of the most pressing policy issues many countries face today. Despite heated debates, there exists little rigorous evidence about whether naturalization fosters or dampens the integration of immigrants into the political fabric of the host society. Our study provides new causal evidence on the long-term effects of naturalization on political integration. Our research design takes advantage of a natural experiment in Switzerland that allows us to separate the independent effect of naturalization from the nonrandom selection into naturalization. We find that in our sample, naturalization caused long-lasting improvements in political integration, with immigrants becoming likely to vote and attaining considerably higher levels of political efficacy and political knowledge.

Abstract

Does naturalization cause better political integration of immigrants into the host society? Despite heated debates about citizenship policy, there exists almost no evidence that isolates the independent effect of naturalization from the nonrandom selection into naturalization. We provide new evidence from a natural experiment in Switzerland, where some municipalities used referendums as the mechanism to decide naturalization requests. Balance checks suggest that for close naturalization referendums, which are decided by just a few votes, the naturalization decision is as good as random, so that narrowly rejected and narrowly approved immigrant applicants are similar on all confounding characteristics. This allows us to remove selection effects and obtain unbiased estimates of the long-term impacts of citizenship. Our study shows that for the immigrants who faced close referendums, naturalization considerably improved their political integration, including increases in formal political participation, political knowledge, and political efficacy.

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: d.hangartner{at}lse.ac.uk.

  • Author contributions: J.H., D.H., and G.P. designed research; J.H., D.H., and G.P. performed research; J.H., D.H., and G.P. collected data; J.H., D.H., and G.P. analyzed data; and J.H., D.H., and G.P. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1418794112/-/DCSupplemental.

Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

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