Interpreting Citizenship: What Does Citizenship Mean?

What is it to become a citizen? Over the last ten years, the US and the German governments have been vociferously advocating for naturalization as a mechanism for social inclusion and national security. But how do immigrants perceive becoming a citizen? This paper explores what being a citizen means to immigrants in New York and Berlin. Through intensive interviews, thick description and using grounded theory, I unearth how new naturalized citizens think and live citizenship in their everyday lives. I question the importance of the developmental model that has been the standard understanding of naturalization for the last hundred years. I discover that naturalized citizens engage specific citizenship frames to explain what citizenship is to them and why they naturalized. These frames include a benefit seeking, a claims making, a hyperpolitical/ bureaucracy avoidance, a circumstance securing and a developmental approach to understanding what citizenship means. I compare the thoughts, opinions and experiences of permanent residents and naturalized citizens in New York and Berlin, two cities with receptive policies toward immigrants located in countries with polar opposite citizenship policies. Based on the data, the paper includes policy prescriptions for how to think about naturalization as a policy goal, how to make it more meaningful and more likely to achieve the ends desired by the respective governments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]