Does Residential Context Matter? Neighborhood Migrant Concentration and Citizenship Acquisition in the Netherlands

Existing studies analyzing the relation between immigrants’ residential environment and their propensity to naturalize produce contradictory findings. These results are difficult interpret, as typically do not measure characteristics at a sufficiently fine-grained scale test hypotheses about social networks naturalization, model data's multi-level structure appropriately, account for selection into environment. To address these shortcomings, this article draws on longitudinal micro-data from administrative registers neighborhood level in Netherlands (approximately 1300 residents per neighborhood). We employ stratified Cox proportional hazard with shared frailty inverse probability of treatment weighting reduce bias due self-selection neighborhoods draw proxies such areas. Our analyses provide support ‘migrant enclosure hypothesis,’ we find that greater migrant concentration is associated lower naturalization rates largely driven by density those In Dutch context, negative effect especially prevalent among large, long-settled communities Morocco Turkey. also ‘naturalization diffusion hypothesis’ observe residing higher levels offset presence immigrants who have completed procedure. Together, findings reveal nuanced picture contrasts de-contextualized cost-benefit theories immigrant highlights relevance local context settlement.