Text 5 (Questions 1-5)

Nancy Holten, 42, was born in the Netherlands. At the age of 8, however, she moved with her family to Switzerland, which Holten has called home for the past 34 years. Holten currently resides, with her three daughters, in the small village of Gipf-Oberfrick, in the far north of the country, within the canton of Aargau. She speaks fluent Swiss-German. Her daughters are Swiss And yet Holten was recently rejected for a Swiss passport, for the second time.

In Switzerland, applications for naturalization are decided not at the federal level, but rather by the country’s cantons and municipalities and the applicants’ peers have a say in whether naturalization gets granted. And, unfortunately for Nancy Holten, her peers are not inclining to give her a passport. Because, despite all the ways she is Swiss, Holten ,a vegan who is extremely vocal about that life choice, has also stridently opposed one of the most beloved cultural traditions of GipfOberfrick and of Switzerland itself – the practice of putting large bells around the necks of cows, for reasons both practical and ceremonial.

In 2015, Holten’s application for naturalization was approved by local authorities but then rejected, in a vote, by 144 of 206 residents of Gipf-Oberfrick. In November of 2016, a similarly sized group gathered at a communal assembly to hear Holten’s case. Some of the attendees booed her as the debates took place. For them, it seems, the matter wasn’t so much that Holten was outspoken in her criticism of the bells. The problem was rather that Holten’s activism, they have said, displays a lack of respect for the village’s and the country’s cultural traditions. The problem was also, more to the point, that Holten had demonstrated that disrespect so publicly.

Holten also rejects the idea that her advocacy of animal rights doubles as an attack on Swiss culture. “Many people think that I am attacking their traditions,” she told The Local. “But that was not what it was about, it was never about that. What solely motivated me about the cowbells was the animals’ welfare.” But that community, it turns out, will not have the final word in deciding Holten’s fate. Her case has moved on, as some of Switzerland’s more complicated naturalization applications will do, to the cantonal government, which is empowered to override the rejections administered by the locals of Gipf-Oberfrick. Holten may still be granted naturalization; she may be rejected once again.

Source: The Atlantic