¡Descarga The Impact of Naturalization on Political Integration of Immigrants: A Swiss Case Study - y más Apuntes en PDF de Fisiología Animal solo en Docsity! Interdisciplinary seminar Naturalization policies May 2017 1 Naturalization fosters the long-term political integration of immigrants: Thesis: The study shows that for the immigrants who faced close referendums, naturalization considerably improved their political integration, including increases in formal political participation, political knowledge, and political efficacy. Body of the text: o Debate: In favor: Naturalization is good because it allows immigrants to integrate more easily Naturalization as a catalyst for integration Against: Naturalization has to be highly restrictive, because if immigrants are granted the citizenship easily they will not have incentives to integrate, as they are already citizens Naturalization as a reward for integration. (Against it: it can backfire and make that the immigrants want to integrate less) o Often studied the effects of naturalization on economic integration rather than political o Problem for studying naturalization: it is far from being randomly assigned, but follows a selection process consisting in 2 parts: Immigrants selectively apply for naturalization (more motivated/informed/rich…) Decision makers decide who is accepted and who not (also depends from variables difficultly observed) Very difficult to avoid the bias: they base their research on an experiment in Switzerland (Naturalization was decided by referendum) Reject the first bias Reject the second bias because 1) They choose which characteristics to show of the applicants and they show the same ones for everyone 2) Apply Regression Discontinuity that compares the barely approved with the barely rejected realize it is pretty randomly assigned o Result: Naturalization has a strong independent effect on improving political integration o 4 main contributions of the study: 1) Naturalization is a catalyst that allow immigrants to become citizens (Tocquevillean sense) 2) Study long-term effects (people who obtained the citizenship 13 years ago) Interdisciplinary seminar Naturalization policies May 2017 2 3) Study the effects for political integration, which is very important for the democracy of a country (they express their opinions and claims through politics rather than violence) 4) It is in Switzerland (large immigrant rate (24%) and heated debate) Setting: In Switzerland the naturalization policies are decided on a local level Identification strategies: o they do not observe the 2nd round applicants (those are more motivated and thus not so representative) o In close referendums (winning or losing by few votes) the outcome is decided by random variables close winners/losers have similar levels of education o Also similar in other variables: year of the referendum, size of the municipality, age, sex, prior residency in Switzerland and their prior residency in Switzerland. Sample: data collected from the referendums held in different municipalities between 1973 and 2003 + interview of 768 immigrants Outcomes: o Four standard indicators for political integration: 1) Political participation (if they have voted in the last federal election or not(dummy variable)) how many exercise their newly acquired right to vote newly naturalized immigrants voted at the same rate as natives 2) Political efficacy: See how much people agree with the sentence “People like me do not have any influence on the government) increase of 0.25 in a scale of 1 in believing they had influence on the government (57% increase over the baseline level) 3) Political knowledge: See if they know who is the Swiss president and how many signatures are necessary for introducing a federal initiative increase of 0.28 on the 1 scale (104% increase), pretty similar to the ones of natives 4) Informal political participation: see if they have done any of these activities: “contacted a politician, worked in a political party, displayed a campaign sticker, participated in a political demonstration, collected signatures for a petition, boycotted a product for political reasons, donated money to a political party, or persuaded others to vote” 12% increase but NOT statistically significant o Studies the long-term results (study is conducted between 2011 and 2013) o Results are consistent across the different identification strategies
