Social politics: The importance of the family for naturalization decisions of the 1.5 generation

How do migrants make the decision to naturalize? The majority of the literature focuses on the economic costs and benefit calculus of individual migrants, usually those who arrived as adults. Yet a large and growing population of foreign-born individuals arrived as children. Despite spending their formative years in the United States, many remain foreign nationals into adulthood. Based on results from a discrete-time event history model of naturalization of 1.5 generation respondents in California we argue that the cost-benefit tradeoffs underlying most accounts of naturalization decisions will apply in different ways to this population. We show that especially for this population the decision to naturalize cannot be conceptualized as an individual choice but is strongly embedded within the family and co-ethnic context which, in turn, introduces symbolic concerns and country of origin related factors into the decision.