Dual citizenship acceptance and immigrant naturalisation propensity in the Netherlands: the relevance of origin- and destination-country rules

There is ample evidence that the possibility of holding dual citizenship is a key predictor of immigrant naturalisation. Over past decades, both migrant origin and destination countries have liberalised rules with regards to dual citizenship. Nevertheless, the acceptance of dual citizenship remains contested and a few countries have gone against the global tide by (re-)introducing restrictions. In this chapter we investigate the role of dual citizenship acceptance in origin and destination countries for immigrants’ propensity to naturalise in the Netherlands, in the period around the reintroduction of the renunciation requirement there in 1997. While a declining post-reform trend in the number of naturalisations has been widely observed, there is limited research on the heterogenous impact of dual citizenship acceptance. We use individual-level register data and apply a Cox proportional hazards regression to analyse the propensity to naturalise among immigrants who could naturalise with or without dual citizenship. We identify dual citizenship acceptance by combining the changing regulations in the Netherlands with information on origin-country citizenship rules around the world. We find that the propensity to naturalise is higher among those who can hold dual citizenship and remains so almost two decades after migration to the host country. We show that dual citizenship acceptance especially affects naturalisation rates among immigrants from EU and other highly developed countries.