Citizenship in context: Naturalisation and residential environment of immigrants in the Netherlands

Cover, Citizenship in context, Christophe Leclerc
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Dissertation on the interaction between the living environment and naturalization of immigrants after they have settled in the Netherlands.

The empirical chapters in this dissertation show that naturalization and immigrants’ residential environment are closely related.

Chapter 2 shows that neighborhood-level characteristics, and more specifically the availability of immigrant networks, are an important predictor of the choice to naturalize or not. However, this relationship is not unambiguous. While having regular contact with other immigrants reduces the likelihood of naturalization, contact with naturalized immigrants may actually encourage naturalization.

hapters 3 and 4 show that Dutchness encourages mobility in the housing market by reducing the likelihood of discrimination based on nationality. From this perspective, immigrants’ nationality may be a determinant of the type of neighborhood in which they live, which in turn matters in the post-settlement process in general.

Finally, the results in Chapter 5 do not confirm the endogenous role of naturalization in the relationship between neighborhood quality and the probability of immigrant mortality. This may be explained by the nature of the Dutch welfare state, in which Dutch citizenship is of little importance for access to health care, and a high degree of neighborhood segregation is prevented.

Leclerc, C. (2022). Citizenship in context: Naturalisation and residential environment of immigrants in the Netherlands. Dissertation, Maastricht University, doi:10.26481/dis.20220420cl.