Citizenship Acquisition in the Age of Immigration Enforcement 

Co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation

The U.S. has lower rates of naturalization than other major immigration destination countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. As anti-immigrant rhetoric, hardline immigration policies and policing threaten immigrants’ social rights, benefits, security, and belonging, are more eligible lawful permanent residents becoming American citizens? Political sociologist Lauren Duquette-Rury will draw on qualitative, quantitative, and experimental data to examine citizenship acquisition among Arab and Latino immigrants, two groups that are primary targets of the Trump administration’s policies and that have very different naturalization rates. She will study how anti-immigration rhetoric and policies in California, Texas, and Michigan affect Latino and Arab immigrants' decisions to naturalize.