Becoming a citizen through marriage: How gender, ethnicity and class shape the nation

The role of marriage in accessing membership entitlements has been studied extensively in the context of marriage migration, but it remains under-researched in the literature on citizenship acquisition. This paper explores specific constructions of deservingness vis-à-vis the foreign spouses of citizens and their marriages in the context of facilitated naturalization in Switzerland. Based on an ethnographic investigation of the naturalization practices of street-level bureaucrats, we show that the politics of belonging in the context of access to citizenship is regulated by intersecting gendered, ethnicized and classed logics of desirability about how a marriage should be. Additionally, a patrilineal logic continues to guide street-level bureaucrats <i>de facto</i> even when legislation has introduced de <i>jure</i> gender equality. Finally, we demonstrate that it is not only immigration regimes, but also citizenship regimes that employ assumptions about what constitutes a ‘good marriage’ in order to draw the boundaries of the nation.