Abstract:
Is naturalization an effective tool to boost refugees’ labor market integration? We address this novel empirical question by exploring survey data from 20 European countries and leveraging variation in citizenship laws across countries, time, and migrant groups as a source of exogenous variation in the probability of naturalization. We find that obtaining citizen status allows refugees to close their gaps in labor market outcomes relative to non-refugee migrants while having non-significant effects on the latter group. We then further explore the heterogeneity of returns to citizenship in a Marginal Treatment Effect framework, showing that migrants with the lowest propensity to naturalize would benefit the most if they did. This reverse selection on gains can be explained by policy features that make it harder for more vulnerable migrant groups to obtain citizenship, suggesting that a relaxation of eligibility constraints would yield benefits for both migrants and host societies.
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Professor of Political Economy at the Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods, University of Milan. Previously, he was a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. He is Research Affiliate of CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy Research) and Research Fellow of CReAM (Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration) and IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor; Bonn). He received a PhD in Economics from University College London in 2011. His main research interests are Labor Economics, Applied Microeconometrics, and economic analysis of migration and crime.
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Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods of the University of Milan. He is also a Research Fellow CEPR, at CReAM, the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration at University College London (UCL), at Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano (LdA) and at IZA. He received his PhD in Economics from University College London in 2010. His main research interests are in Applied Microeconomics, Labour Economics and the Economics of Migration. His work has been published in journals such as the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of the European Eocnomic Association, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Economic Geography, and Economic Policy among others.
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Maxime Pirot is an economist at the Research and Statistic Directorate of the French Ministry of Labour (DARES). He holds a Master's degree from Paris School of Economics (PSE) and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Since October 2021, he has been a junior researcher at the Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods, University of Milan. He has also been a research assistant at the Paris School of Economics.
