The impact of citizenship acquisition on migrants’ occupational trajectories in France

Jean-Louis Rallu, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Alina Toader, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Naturalization is considered to be the ultimate step of migrants’ integration into the host society. With regard to employment and occupation, naturalization is expected to improve immigrants’ participation into the labour market and also to open access to public sector jobs. Using biographic data from the 2003 “Histoire de Vie” and the 2008 “Trajectoires et Origines” surveys, this paper will analyze the impact of naturalization on being in stable employment in France. Naturalized citizens will be compared with foreign migrants using bi-probit models to test for endogeneity effects at both dates. We shall also consider occupation changes at four stages of the migration/naturalization process: on arrival, before naturalization, after naturalization and at the time of survey. The impact of former citizenship and other variables will be considered to show the range of integration levels. It appeared from the 2003 survey that naturalization increased the chance of being in a stable job, but this effect varies greatly according to immigrants’ origin (former citizenship). Naturalized former non EU citizens were significantly less likely to be in stable employment than former EU citizens. Migrants from North-Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey had also more difficulty attaining stable employment after naturalization. Education and gender also had significant effects. This paper will update these findings with the 2008 data in order to assess if changes have occurred in the impact of naturalization and origin on migrants’ labour market integration.