To Naturalize or Not? A Comparative Study of Naturalization Decisions and Meanings of Citizenship Among Migrants in Canada

Anna Triandafyllidou, Sara Hormozinejad, Deepa Nagari, CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University

Contact: sara.hormozinejad@torontomu.ca

This study offers in-depth qualitative insights into how migrants in Canada make sense of naturalization and citizenship, and how they navigate decisions to naturalize, delay, or opt out despite being eligible. Investigating naturalization decisions is important because citizenship fosters social cohesion through equal access to resources, political participation, and inclusion. By centring migrants’ perspectives, the findings contribute to public and policy conversations about citizenship, belonging, and immigrant integration, offering nuanced insights into the individual-level dynamics that underlie broader patterns of naturalization in Canada’s evolving immigration landscape.

This study is part of the international CITMIG project, “Citizenship and Immigrant Integration: A Multidimensional Analysis,” an interdisciplinary initiative that examines the role of citizenship in immigrant integration across four immigrant-receiving countries, including France, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and is funded by the Institut Convergences Migrations (ICM), a France-based research institute.

The objective of this study is to provide a nuanced qualitative account of why eligible migrants in Canada choose to naturalize, delay naturalization, or refrain from pursuing citizenship, and what Canadian citizenship means to them. While quantitative research documents shifts in naturalization rates, far less is known about how migrants themselves interpret the costs, benefits, and emotional stakes of citizenship. This study addresses this gap by examining migrants’ lived experiences and decision-making processes across different life stages. Specifically, it explores how intersectional identities, such as gender, original nationality, family status, and migration history, as well as one-step or two-step pathways to permanent residency, shape naturalization trajectories. This study also considers how citizenship decisions relate to migrants’ longer-term plans, including intentions to remain in Canada, return, or pursue onward mobility. Together, these objectives aim to deepen understanding of naturalization as a contextual, relational, and life-course process.

1. How do eligible migrants in Canada make decisions to naturalize, delay naturalization, or refrain from pursuing citizenship?
2. How do migrants understand and ascribe meanings to citizenship in general, and to Canadian citizenship in particular?
3. How are migrants’ naturalization decisions connected to their longer-term settlement intentions, including decisions to remain in Canada or pursue onward or return migration?

Over the past two decades, Canada has experienced a notable decline in the proportion of eligible permanent residents who acquire Canadian citizenship. Statistics Canada data indicate that naturalization rates among recent immigrants fell by approximately 40% between the late 1990s and 2021. While Canada continues to be regarded as comparatively liberal in its citizenship regime, shifts in residency requirements, fees, and administrative processes since the early 21st century have altered the landscape of naturalization. At the same time, debates about the meaning and value of citizenship persist as Canada navigates its identity as a settler-colonial state within an increasingly globalized and transnational migration context. Existing research has documented declining naturalization trends through quantitative analyses. This project addresses the need for qualitative research that examines migrants’ lived experiences, interpretations of citizenship, and the practical, emotional, and transnational considerations shaping their choices.

This study adopts a qualitative approach to centre migrants’ perspectives and lived experiences, examining how migrants in Canada understand and navigate decisions about naturalization, citizenship, and future plans related to staying in or leaving the country. Semi-structured interviews are being conducted with naturalized citizens and eligible permanent residents, with particular attention to intersectional identities, one- and two-step pathways to permanent residency, and the ways in which citizenship policies in both Canada and migrants’ countries of origin shape decision-making over time. Participants come from a diverse range of countries, including those that permit dual citizenship (Iran, Pakistan, the Philippines, and France) and those that prohibit it (China, India, Nepal, and the Netherlands). Interviews examine participants’ migration histories, understandings of citizenship, and long-term mobility plans, with attention to how life-course milestones intersect with structural conditions to shape evolving motivations to naturalize or opt out of citizenship.

The project has received ethics approval from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Research Ethics Board (REB #2025-101) and is currently in the data collection phase.

As of the end of 2025, 50 interviews have been completed. 

Preliminary findings from the study were presented at the Immigration, Citizenship, and Intergroup Contact workshop at the Paris School of Economics in December 2025.

July 2026

Institut Convergences Migrations (ICM)

CERC Migration

Naturalization, citizenship, citizenship policies, dual citizenship, migrants’ decision-making, belonging, onward migration, return migration, life course, Canadian citizenship