The article "Naturalization of immigrants in the context of institutional diversity: politics issues, but for whom?" written by Maarten P. Vink , Tijana Prokic-Breuer și Jaap Dronkers analyzes the citizenship procedures for first generation immigrants in 16 European countries.

The authors aim to show that the naturalization of immigrants in Europe is determined not only by the characteristics of the country of origin and individual characteristics, but also by the opportunities created by the laws of citizenship in countries of origin and destination.

The article emphasizes that policies on citizenship matter less for immigrants from highly developed countries, but matter significantly for immigrants from less developed countries. The level of development of the country of origin is a key factor in understanding the relationship between citizenship and individual level characteristics on the one hand and citizenship and policies from Europe on the other hand.

The survey shows that immigrants in Europe from mid and underdeveloped countries have, on average, 2.5 times more potential to get citizenship than those from highly developed countries. According to the authors, because there are big differences between immigrants in their motivation to naturalize, the impact of citizenship policies varies for the two groups by country of origin.

All in all, institutional diversity obviously affects the naturalization rates among immigrants, the relation being conditioned by the level of development of the immigrants’ country of origin.

Source: http://www.mipex.eu/vink-et-al-immigrant-naturalization-context-institutional-diversity-policy-matters-whom