Citizenship and Labor Market Position: Turkish Immigrants in Germany and the Netherlands 1 Rob Euwals CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis and Netspar Jaco Dagevos, Me ´rove Gijsberts SCP Netherlands Institute for Social Research Hans Roodenburg CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis The relation between citizenship and labor market position is com- plex. Besides a causal impact from citizenship towards labor market position, several selection mechanisms may cause particular immi- grants to choose for naturalization. We investigate the empirical rela- tion on the basis of German and Dutch survey data. For the Netherlands we find a positive relation between citizenship and labor market position, while for Germany we find mixed results as citizen- ship is negatively related to tenured employment. The contrasting results may be explained by institutional differences. In Germany, economic self-reliance is more strictly required for naturalization than in the Netherlands. This may lead to a stronger incentive to naturalize for workers with a temporary contract in Germany. 1. INTRODUCTION Immigration and naturalization policies and their impact on labor market outcomes are hotly debated in many countries. In this study, we investi- gate the relation between citizenship and labor market position on the 1 The authors thank Pieter Bevelander, Amelia Constant, Sjef Ederveen, Han Entzinger, Joachim Frick, John Haisken-DeNew, Holger Hinte, Michael Fertig, Peter Kooiman, Ruud Koopmans, Aslan Zorlu and participants at the SOEP User Conference 2007 and seminars at CPB, IZA and RWI Essen for comments. The provision of data by DIW Berlin and Statistics Netherlands is acknowledged. JEL Classifications: C25, F22, J15, J61 Ó 2010 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7379.2010.00816.x IMR Volume 44 Number 3 (Fall 2010):513–538 513