Abstract

The project aims at understanding how the acquisition of citizenship at birth affects the labor market integration of second generation immigrants. In the project we exploit a citizenship reform that introduced birthright citizenship for all immigrants born on German soil from January 1st 2000 onwards, conditional on at least one parent having resided in Germany for a minimum of 8 years. Our empirical strategy exploits this birthday cutoff and aims at identifying the causal effect of the policy on occupational choices and wages of young adults with a migration background. Given the timing of the reform, we pay particular attention to the early stages of immigrants' careers, focusing on the participation in training courses and on their first jobs in the labor market. The project will mainly use German social security data.