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Migration Policy Group

Access to citizenship and its impact on immigrant integration

PRESENTATION

Access to citizenship and its impact on immigrant integration (ACIT) was financed by European Fund for the Integration of Third-country Nationals (administered by DG Home Affairs). The main goals of the research project were to explore the links between acquisition of nationality and the integration processes and to encourage effective measures for facilitating immigrants’ access to citizenship in the EU. In its 18-month programme, ACIT developed four sets of citizenship indicators on:

  • Citizenship laws
  • The implementation of citizenship laws
  • Rates of citizenship acquisition
  • The impact of rates of citizenship acquisition on integration
  • The research will take place in all 27 EU Member States and accession candidate and EEA countries (Croatia, Iceland, FYROM Macedonia, Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey)

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ACIT has dedicated pages on our partner’s website, where you can download all reports and play with the data.

10 EU Member States (Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom) were selected for in-depth case studies because of their large immigrant and foreign populations, diverse citizenship laws and high or low acquisition rates.

National stakeholder dialogues were organised by subcontracted NGO/think-tank partners in these 10 countries (in Vienna, Tallinn, Paris, Berlin, Budapest, Dublin, Rome, Lisbon, Barcelona, London).

ACIT collected and compareed available national and international evidence on how acquiring citizenship enhances immigrants’ participation in society and the democratic process. It analysed indicators to reveal the hidden links between citizenship and integration policies within EU competence, including anti-discrimination, family reunion and long-term residence.

ACIT made a first-ever impact assessment of citizenship law in each country and across Europe. The findings revealed the effects of recent reforms and compared the impact of legal rules with that of societal factors such as origin, residence duration, gender, age and social status. Research results were disseminated in 10 national handbooks, 4 comparative reports based on the indicators and a final European-level report.

ACIT also highlighted changes in citizenship laws and implementation that have improved integration in practice and it provided policy recommendations to reinforce EU indicators on active citizenship and to develop an EU module on “Citizenship and Integration.” Academic researchers, government and civil society can obtain data, comparative analyses and practical guidelines on how to evaluate policy outcomes, set targets and good governance standards, and assess the prospective impact of policy changes.

ACIT contributed to more effective policies and practices for integration and citizenship acquisition by creating authoritative, comprehensive and easy-to-use databases which will foster European information exchange and cooperation. The project was conducted in partnership with the European University Institute’s EU Democracy Observatory on Citizenship (EUDO) and was sponsored by the European Integration Fund.

LATEST PRODUCTS

Access to citizenship and its impact on immigrant integration WORK IN USE

The Council of Europe’s Legal Affairs Committee uses ACIT findings for its new report on nationality-related issues

October 16, 2013
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COEThe report by Boriss Cilevics (Latvia, SOC) dealing with nationality-related issues, was adopted on 2 October 2013 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Legal Affairs Committee and uses findings of the ACIT project and echoes the argumentation of ACIT’s European Standards.

The report notes that the trend in several Council of Europe member states in recent years has been to make it more difficult to acquire nationality, although the right to a nationality is enshrined in several international legal instruments, including the European Convention on Nationality, which only 20 member states have ratified.

Downloadable files

MPG cited in Financial Times column on UK citizenship tests

March 18, 2013
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Citizenship tests in the UK will change later this month. This prompted the Financial Times to write a column on the necessity of citizenship tests. MPG Policy Analyst Jasper Dag Tjaden was quoted in the column, saying “I really do think that citizenship tests are more about political symbolism than effective policy making”.

Click here for more information about our project Acquisition of citizenship and its impact on immigrant integration (ACIT).

Click here to read the Financial Times’ column.

Access to citizenship and its impact on immigrant integration WORK IN CONTEXT

French government pushes for easier access to naturalisation process

August 29, 2013
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passeportFrench Interior Minister Manuel Valls continues to work on his promise to return naturalisation to its traditional place as a means for integration into the French Republic.

The Minister’s second set of guidelines try to undo the damage done in the last years of the previous government, which decentralised the procedure and instructed prefects to restrict their practice. The new guidelines address several points raised by MPG and its French MIPEX partner, France Terre d’Asile, working together to identify the legal and administrative obstacles to naturalisation and propose solutions for France – see their reaction to new guidelines here.

A EU-funded handbook has been designed specifically for French policymakers and practitioners, both in French and English. A targeted MIPEX report, funded by the French Embassy in the US, detailed the recent changes in French naturalisation policies, their impacts on naturalisation and integration, and the project’s recommendations for reforming French immigration policy.

Cecilia Malmström on access to nationality for immigrants

August 9, 2013
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italiaEU Commissioner Cecilia Malmström stepped into the Italy’s ongoing debate on naturalisation and ius soli reform in support of the country’s integration minister, Cécile Kyenge. Malmström welcomed broader dialogue since access to nationality contributes to immigrant integration, but refrained from taking a position since national citizenship is not an EU competence under the Treaties.

For more, read the publications from ‘Access to Citizenship and its Impact on Immigrant Integration’, a recent EIF-funded research with the EUDO-Citizenship consortium run out of the European University Institute. A Handbook on the research results for Italy is available for policy-makers and practitioners in English and in Italian. Learn more about immigrants’ experiences and problems with naturalisation in Italy by reading the Immigrant Citizens Survey, another MPG collaborative project. See the EUDO-Citizenship website for more on Italy’s citizenship laws and politics. The research also captured the legal and administrative obstacles to naturalisation across Europe and the trends in national debates. Keep an eye out for the project’s forthcoming European summary and proposed standards for the acquisition of nationality by immigrants and their descendants. Join MPG in the debate at a hearing of the European Economic and Social Committee and further events and actions as part of the 2013 European Year of Citizens.

EVENTS

Are you looking for past news and events related to the Access to citizenship and its impact on immigrant integration project?

News and events prior to 2012 are available in our archive.

Go to Archive

In Partnership with:

  • European University Institute
  • Maastricht University
  • European Commission Home affairs
  • ucd
  • eudo
  • University of Edinburgh