About 25,000 third generation immigrants could benefit from facilitated citizenship if voters approve a reform on February 12. Iva Petrusic, whose grandfather came from Croatia to Switzerland in the 1970s, explains just how complicated the process was for her to get a Swiss passport.

“I know who I am and I’m comfortable with who I am,” says the 20-year-old student. Iva has learned to live in two cultures: she was born and raised in Switzerland of parents with roots in Croatia – she is a typical ‘third-generation’ Swiss immigrant.

She went through the regular and cumbersome citizenship procedure, which lasted more than two years, and in December 2015 she finally became Swiss at the age of 16.

“I was born here, I grew up here and have always lived here,” she says. “Therefore I wanted to be able to participate in the political life of my country.”

We meet in the town of Aarau and a find a table in a café which serves French-style pancakes on this cold January morning. Iva who lives with her parents in nearby Suhr, usually comes to Aarau to meet friends in the evening.

She recalls the quarrels with her parents about going into town at night when she was still a teenager.

“The Swiss seem to be much more relaxed about spending time with friends in town, or sleeping over or even going on holiday together,” she says. “Croatian parents are often much more conservative. For them the family takes priority.”

She found a way of bringing both cultural identities together, her parents learning to trust her and, at the same time, her friends understanding the importance of family ties.

“It was not easy for my parents to know when they should act like the Swiss do and when it was right to pass on to us something about the Croatian mentality.”

Integration

Growing up without the Swiss passport was not really a problem for Iva. “At school other pupils sometimes called me a ‘Yugo’ but this has never bothered me.”