Regula Argast's study examines the development of Swiss citizenship between the founding of the federal state in 1848 and the anchoring of a restrictive naturalization and settlement policy in the interwar period. The focus of their investigation is the inclusion and exclusion of changing population groups as a citizen and the question of the causes for the granting or denial of Swiss citizenship. It becomes clear that the rules of granting between the federal government, cantons and municipalities had to be negotiated and coordinated again and again. It was only during and after the First World War that a nationalized and ethnicized fear of "foreign infiltration" was combined with the traditional defensive attitude of the civil communities.