IMISCOE helbling Switzerland could well have the most peculiar naturalisation system in the world. DISSERTATIONS Whereas in most countries citizenship attribution is regulated by the central state, each municipality of Switzerland has the right to decide who can become a national citizen. By transcending formal citizenship models, the Swiss case thus casts citizenship politics in an entirely new light. This book explores naturalisation Citizenship Practising and Heterogeneous Nationhood processes from a comparative perspective, explaining why some Swiss municipalities pursue more restrictive citizenship policies than others. Through quantitative and Practising Citizenship and qualitative data, this study shows how negotiation processes between political actors produce a large variety of local citizenship models. Integrating Bourdieu’s political sociology, the theoretical framework innovatively combines symbolic and material Heterogeneous Nationhood aspects of naturalisations and underlines the production processes of ethnicity. Marc Helbling is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Zurich. He Naturalisations in Swiss Municipalities has studied political science in Lausanne, Paris, Zurich and New York. His research fields include immigration and citizenship politics, nationalism, national political conflict and public policy analysis. marc helbling “This study takes research on citizenship onto a new level of analytical rigour and empirical precision. It shows that naturalisation practices are the result of a political negotiation process between actors that hold different conceptions of the nation and its boundaries.” Andreas Wimmer, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles “By focusing on the small and poorly understood case of Switzerland, Marc Helbling provides a major contribution to the study of citizenship. His meticulous study is theoretically informed, empirically balanced and it reaches bold and convincing conclusions that should be of broad interest to this growing field.” Marc Morjé Howard, Associate Professor of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. ibn 978 90 8964 034 5 ameram nieri re · .a.nl Amsterdam University Press Practising Citizenship and Heterogeneous Nationhood IMISCOE (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion) IMISCOE is a Network of Excellence uniting over 500 researchers from various institutes that specialise in migration studies across Europe. Networks of Excel- lence are cooperative research ventures that were created by the European Commission to help overcome the fragmentation of international studies. They amass a crucial source of knowledge and expertise to help inform European leadership today. Since its foundation in 2004, IMISCOE has advanced an integrated, multidis- ciplinary and globally comparative research programme to address the themes specified in its name, short for: International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe. IMISCOE members come from all branches of the eco- nomic and social sciences, the humanities and law. The Network draws from existing studies and advances innovative lines of inquiry key to European pol- icymaking and governance. Priority is placed on developing a theoretical design to promote new research and offer practical alternatives for sound policy. 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The works span an array of fields within studies of in- ternational migration, integration and social cohesion in Europe. The TEXTBOOKS series produces manuals, handbooks and other didactic tools developed by specialists in migration studies. The works are used within the IMISCOE training programme and for educational purposes by academic insti- tutes worldwide. IMISCOE Policy Briefs and more information on the Network can be found at www.imiscoe.org. Practising Citizenship and Heterogeneous Nationhood Naturalisations in Swiss Municipalities Marc Helbling IMISCOE Dissertations Cover design: Studio Jan de Boer BNO, Amsterdam Layout: The DocWorkers, Almere ISBN 978 90 8964 034 5 NUR 741 / 763 © Marc Helbling/Amsterdam University Press, 2008 All rights reserved. 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To Charlotte and my parents Table of Contents Acknowledgments 9 1 Politics of Citizenship 11 1.1 What is to be explored? 12 1.2 Why explore local naturalisation politics? 17 1.3 Culture and power: how to explain local naturalisation politics 22 2 From Citizenship to National Self-Understanding 27 2.1 What is citizenship? 27 2.2 Becoming a new member: from local to national citizenship 28 2.3 Two modes of social closure: immigration policy and national citizenship 31 2.4 A new form of political community: popular sovereignty, equality and self-determination 33 2.5 Citizenship and national self-understanding: analytical ambiguities 41 2.6 Citizenship as a contested instrument of social closure 45 2.7 Conclusion 47 3 Nation as a Political Field 49 3.1 From the practice of citizenship to the logic of practice 49 3.2 Rethinking the social construction of nations 51 3.3 The actors’ perceptions and categorisations 57 3.4 Limited contestations 62 3.5 The political field and cultural compromise 64 3.6 Empirical implications: the design of the study 67 4 Explaining Rejection Rates 75 4.1 A first glimpse at rejected applications 75 4.2 Competing explanations 78 4.3 What is to be explained: the rejection rate 82 4.4 Operationalisation of the independent variables 85 8 PRACTISING CITIZENSHIP AND HETEROGENEOUS NATIONHOOD 4.5 Results 87 4.6 External influences I 92 5 Comparing Local Citizenship Models 95 5.1 Introduction 95 5.2 Understandings of citizenship 96 5.3 Structure and influence 107 5.4 External influences II 119 6 Four Naturalisation Fields 123 6.1 Introduction 123 6.2 Bernhigh and Bernlow 126 6.3 Aargauhigh and Aargaulow 138 6.4 Controversies and occurrences 146 7 Local Social Influence Networks 149 7.1 Introduction 149 7.2 How to explain individual understandings of citizenship: classic approaches 150 7.3 Social influence and norm formation 157 7.4 Explanatory model and results 160 7.6 Conclusion 164 8 Contingent Citizenship Politics 167 8.1 Local struggles over cultural boundaries 167 8.2 Towards a sociology of citizenship and nationalism 170 8.3 Contingent naturalisation politics: arbitrary decisions 174 Notes 177 Annex Questionnaire for Interviews with Local Politicians 185 1. Personal attitudes 185 2 Influence and contacts 189 3 Swiss identity and foreigners 191 4 General questions 194 References 197 Acknowledgments First of all, I would like to emphasise that it was a particular privilege to work together with Hanspeter Kriesi who supervised my work from the very beginning to the very end. Having had different academic backgrounds at the moment we started to work together, we have not always had the same ideas on how the social world can be understood. This is, however, the best thing that can ever happen to a researcher – challenging one’s own perspectives and learning from other research traditions. His unresting will to improve the work of his doctoral stu- dents and his openness to new ideas helped me a lot to clean up my ar- guments. His enthusiasm to make the world we live in more compre- hensible has attracted a lot of people and has united a big crowd of very interesting researchers around him. Thus, I have not only had the opportunity to meet a lot of inspiring colleagues in Zurich, but also to make many good friends. Moreover, I also want to express my grati- tude to Rogers Brubaker and Simon Hug, who were part of my disser- tation committee and provided many helpful comments and valuable suggestions. I wish to thank the Swiss National Science Foundation, which gener- ously financed this project for three years (Project-Nr. 404040-101055; from December 2003 to January 2007). Among other things, this funding allowed me to engage two student-assistants for one year. Without the help of Sandra Egli and Silvia Matter I would not have been able to prepare fourteen case studies and to conduct over 180 in- terviews. Both of them have proved to be serious field-workers and cri- tical researchers. The various parts of this book have benefited from presentations and discussions at different conferences and workshops. I have had several opportunities to discuss