"Un/deserving to “be Swiss”: Re-assessing
“Schweizermachen” and dual citizenship"

(Research: Maria Lassak, Jelena Tosic)

The project explores the arena of citizenship as part of the particular and ambiguous history of the “Willensnation”, marked by liberalism, inclusiveness and diversity as well as pronounced gendered and culturalising boundary-making towards (migrant) “otherness” and specific discourses of migration and “integration”. The subproject will be the first long-term ethnographic exploration of the aftermath of the revised citizenship law (2014), which came into effect on January 1st 2018. To grasp contestations in the Swiss naturalisation and (dual) citizenship arena, the subproject takes an ethnographic and comparative-contrastive approach with two empirical entry points: a canton where naturalisation tends to be rather strict and contested (St. Gallen, e.g. 2nd generation naturalisation); in contrast with a canton which features both a more liberal naturalisation regime and prominent contestations of dual citizenship (Geneva, e.g. dual citizenship by politicians).

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