ABSTRACT
Having confirmed in the preceding chapter that naturalisation politics can be explained with political and cultural variables and that socio‐economic and socio‐structural factors have no explanatory impact, in the following chapters we will analyse in more detail the local struggles over the definition of cultural boundaries. Relying on data collected in fourteen case studies, we are now going to study the national self‐understandings of local politicians in relation to the criteria they establish to select candidates for naturalisation. Besides the symbolic and cultural aspects of citizenship within our municipalities, we will also account for the local influence structures, which will enable us to distinguish dominant discourses from minority discourses. By describing in this chapter the variety of citizenship policies and the prevailing conceptions between municipalities, the relevance of this study once again will be underscored and some more flesh will be added to the barebones analytical arguments sketched out above.
