The cooperation between Qualiservice and the Specialised Information Service Political Science (Pollux) enabled the processing of the now published interview data set as a so-called ‘use study’:

Mende, Lisa; Zuber, Christina (2025): Administrative Ungleichheit bei der Bearbeitung von Anträgen auf deutsche Staatsbürgerschaft: Qualitativer Teil (AdmInCit-qual). Transkripte der Expert:inneninterviews [dataset]. Qualiservice, PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.983192

As part of the BMBF-funded project ‘Administrative Inequality in Handling Requests for German Citizenship (AdmInCit)’, Lisa Mende and Christina Zuber (University of Konstanz) conducted 64 semi-structured expert interviews with individuals from and around the municipal naturalisation administration in Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. The anonymised transcripts are now available as a scientific use file for secondary scientific use and, in excerpts, for academic teaching via Qualiservice. In addition, extensive contextual materials have been archived for reuse, including interview guidelines, consent forms, an anonymisation concept, a coding manual and case descriptions.

The aim of the qualitative study was to conduct a comparative analysis of the decentralised implementation of German nationality law. The interviews were conducted in 16 districts and cities and cover the perspectives of both case workers and persons with managerial responsibility within the authorities. While the former provide detailed insights into the everyday decision-making practice of naturalisation, the latter focus more on the institutional, political and social framework conditions. For methodological triangulation, interviews were also conducted with individuals from related fields of practice, including migration lawyers, civil society actors, political representatives and (former) applicants themselves. These complement the institutional perspective with civil society, political and personal views on naturalisation practice in Germany.

The data set offers great potential for research on administrative practices, (un)equal treatment in the actions of public authorities, local scope for the implementation of federal law, and the role of individual and institutional scope for action in migration processes. The material could also be used for comparative studies in the fields of administrative sociology, political sociology, and legal and policy research.

The quantitative data associated with this mixed-methods study are archived at GESIS. Further information on the availability of the material can be found in the Qualiservice catalogue.