Skip to content

Seminar series

Regional preferences and Turkish passports

Administrative inequality in German citizenship policy

Add to calendar 2024-10-10 12:00 2024-10-10 13:00 Europe/Rome Regional preferences and Turkish passports Sala Belvedere Villa Schifanoia YYYY-MM-DD
Print

Scheduled dates

Oct 10 2024

12:00 - 13:00 CEST

Sala Belvedere, Villa Schifanoia

Organised by

Join Christina Zuber to explore how regional political preferences shape the implementation of citizenship policy in Germany, with a focus on dual citizenship for Turkish nationals.
This article analyses inequalities in the implementation of citizenship policy in Germany, a key migrant destination where citizenship law is decided federally but implemented by regional and local governments. Before the reform of June 2024, German citizenship law required third-country nationals to renounce their citizenship upon naturalisation, although frontline officials could exempt applicants from this requirement. The analysis maps the share of Turks who gained German citizenship while retaining Turkish citizenship, revealing considerable variation across, as well as within, German states. The variation is then examined to determine whether it can be explained by the political preferences of subnational governments, with German centre-right parties opposed to, and centre-left parties in favour of, dual citizenship. Longitudinal models for the years 2000-2021 demonstrate that subnational politics matter: the longer a region or local community has been governed by the centre-right, the lower the share of new citizens holding both German and Turkish passports.
Go back to top of the page