Accelerating the Passage to Citizenship: Marriage and Naturalization in France.

Naturalization systems often provide immigrant spouses of citizens with accelerated access to citizenship, but thus far, the impact of such fast-track procedures has yet to be examined by empirical analysis. Toward that end, we leverage a unique feature of French naturalization policy: a dual track system, one for standard naturalization and a second that makes naturalization a right for non-citizens married to citizens. We show that, overall, family-level factors exercise the greatest influence on naturalization decisions relative to individual and contextual factors; further, marriage to French citizens is the single most powerful factor, yielding effects on naturalization in both tracks. However, while marriage to a naturalized citizen promotes standard naturalization, marriage to a French native fosters citizenship

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Copyright © 2021 McAvay and Waldinger.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.