ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to situate case analyses in a different legal context–in north-western Switzerland. It discusses four stories of naturalisation in the Canton of Neuchatel, so as to illustrate how the protagonists act within the administrative and legal paths in their country of adoption. The chapter presents some results of the Swiss interdisciplinary research project entitled “Immigrants’ trajectories of integration, between indeterminate criteria and uncertain life courses: Analysis of legal cases”, from which the data are extracted. It describes the Swiss legislative framework governing the procedure of naturalisation, giving an account of the political and legislative debate in Swiss society. The chapter analyses the stories by focusing on the clients’ legal agentivity with the aim of showing their’ attitude to dealing with a foreign cultural and legal environment. It outlines compares the different clients’ administrative legal paths, trying to explain whether and how they were successful or unsuccessful in obtaining Swiss citizenship.
