Junge Menschen sprechen über die Einbürgerung: gesellschaftliche Positionierung und formale Staatsbürgerschaft im Übergang ins Erwachsenenalter

Abstract

This paper is based on the intermediate results of a qualitative longitudinal study which aims at analysing how young people of foreign origin in Switzerland position themselves in the host country’s society. It presents three basic models with regard to the migrant youths’ attitudes towards naturalisation in Switzerland: entitlement claim, irrelevance and proud renunciation. The three models are discussed in terms of their close relationship with the young migrants’ social self-positioning as well as in terms of individual strategies against the restrictive and ethnicising Swiss naturalisation policy. The young migrants’ interpretations and strategies show for one the mechanisms according to which low social positions in the transnational social space are being reproduced. They also bear witness to the erosion, loss of meaning even, of the institution of citizenship at a societal scale.