This webinar focuses on the role of citizenship in the lives of children of immigrants. Acquiring citizenship at birth is likely to exert an effect on children’s human capital through a more secure future in the country of birth and their parents’ expectations on the returns to host country specific human capital investments. Vice versa, growing up in a country without being formally recognized as a full member of society can adversely affect assimilation processes, in a context where socioeconomic background and racial discrimination already challenge modes of incorporation. While recent studies have identified the relevance of citizenship for immigrants’ children on, especially, educational outcomes (see e.g. here, here, here and here), the effect of the timing of the citizenship acquisition remains understudied. This element is crucial because in Europe territorial birthright citizenship remains the exceptions and, as a result, children are largely dependent on the timing of their parents’ naturalisation. How this affects educational outcomes has remained largely understudied. Based on two recent papers, on the cases of Germany and the Netherlands, we discuss a) empirical strategies to identify causal effects; b) the relevance of the timing of citizenship acquisition on education outcomes of immigrants’ children; and c) heterogenous effects within the study population.

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