A Ticket to Mobility? Naturalization and out-Migration of Asylum Migrants in the Netherlands

Research into citizenship and assimilation of immigrants is characterized by the ongoing discussion as to whether citizenship acquisition should be considered the crown on the completed integration process or a catalyst for improving the social integration of immigrants. Many scholars agree that within groups of comparable immigrants (in terms of i.a. country of origin, migration motive, and employment situation), naturalized immigrants are in a more advanced stage of the process of assimilation than ‘group members’ that have not obtained citizenship of the host country. The degree of assimilation in sociocultural domains is in its turn negatively related to return intentions, confirming the neoclassical migration theory (de Haas & Fokkema, 2011). Other contributions have illustrated how some migrants themselves consider obtaining citizenship of the receiving country as a means of mobility across borders rather than an expression of permanent settlement intentions (see for example van Liempt, 2011). For asylum migrants it may be particularly valuable to obtain EU citizenship, as this enables them to move more freely in Europe. We test this naturalization-as-ticket-to-mobility thesis in the case of asylum migrants in the Netherlands. Longitudinal (register) data allow us to follow a selection of asylum migrants who registered in the Municipal Personal Records database in 1998 and 1999 (N= 10,500). The propensity to return or onward international migration is estimated for asylum migrants from various origin backgrounds and the role of naturalization in these trajectories is examined.