IZA Interethnic Practitioners' Meeting on Naturalization and Citizenship

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As part of the IZA research project “The Economics and Persistence of Migrant Ethnicity,” supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, the third IZA Interethnic Practitioners’ Meeting was held in Bonn on January 15, 2007. The exchange of ideas and experience between IZA researchers and experts in the field centered around the topic of naturalization and citizenship. Among the invited guests were naturalized and non-naturalized immigrants to Germany, as well as representatives of major NGOs and government agencies dealing with citizenship issues. They discussed possible motives for or against naturalization, the legal framework and the economic determinants of the decision to apply for German citizenship. Led by Don J. DeVoretz (Simon Fraser University and IZA) and Pieter Bevelander (Malmö University and IZA), the debate with the invited migrants yielded important insights into complicated motivational issues that will be highly relevant for future research. The participants of the meeting also discussed the causes of the recent decrease in the German naturalization rate. The next IZA Interethnic Practitioners’ Meeting will focus on the issue of interethnic marriages.
Participants of the third IZA Interethnic Practitioners' Meeting