Labels and Categories: ‘Integrating’ Citizens into the Body Politique – A Diaspora Perspective

In this paper, I try to understand the intersection between ‘integration’ in legal terms, and how ‘non-citizens’ (Anderson, 2013) situate themselves in terms of belonging vis a vis the genealogy of this legal structure that renders individuals at once inside and outside of the normative power structure that constitutes a body politique. More specifically, how do labor- and forced migrants from former Yugoslavia negotiate ‘integration’ in Switzerland in legal and social terms? Former-Yugoslavs constitute not only a comparatively large number of ‘non-citizens’ in Switzerland. Individuals from-and-with-connections to this community also embody numerous labels and categories of migrant that statistical databases, the media, and legal practices attach to them. Due to, and in an effort to illustrate the fluid character of how labelling and categorizing ‘non-citizens’ affects belonging empirically, this article builds on the theoretical reflections by Rebecca Hamlin, Patricia Ewick and Susan S. Silbey, Engin Isin, and Cecilia Menjívar. Key-findings in this paper illustrate a two-tiered narrative: ‘non-citizens’ maintain their pursuit of not attracting attention to their persona – a strategy that lets individuals disappear within the larger society. At the same time, and in conjunction with the tightening legal basis of belonging to the Swiss body politique during the 1990s, interlocutors do not simply highlight discontent with the exclusionary legal practices ‘non-citizens’ experience. Instead, interviewees actively built Swiss-wide diaspora-connections and networks to aid each-other when legal and administrative questions arise, but also to actively influence the political and legal landscape in Switzerland.