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This article contributes the following: First, it argues along previous works that rites of passage include continuous testing, which needs to be passed in order to gain a certain level of acceptance within the research field. Here besides the emotional effort, researchers have to position themselves and are confronted with questions of trust. Second, it is argued that the collected and analysed data on the rites of passage enable us to make sense of street-level bureaucrats' work and functioning of state institutions, especially in a police context. Reflections on research negotiations drew the author's attention to how mistrust towards the “other”, here defined as migrant other, prevails the migration regime. This mistrust is later transferred onto the researcher, whose stay is deemed questionable and eventually intrusive.

The collected data include semi-structured interviews, as well as several months of participant observation with street-level officers and superordinate staff, deepening previous discussions on research access and entrance. It further allows understanding street-level narratives, especially when it comes to the culture of suspicion embedded in police work, connecting the experienced tests with the everyday knowledge of police officers and case workers.

The analysis of rites of passage enable us to make sense of street-level bureaucrats' work, especially in a police context, since we find a specific way of suspicion directed towards the researcher. It is based on a general mistrust towards the “other”, here defined as migrant other, whose stay is deemed illegal and thus intruding. In this context, the positionality of the researcher becomes crucial and needs strategical planning.

Accessing and being able to enter the “field” is of crucial relevance to researchers, interested in studying, e.g. sense-making and decision-making of the respective interlocutors. Yet, ethnographic accounts often disclose only partially, which hurdles, limiting or contesting their aspirations to conduct fieldwork, were encountered.

The personal role of researchers, their background and emotions are often neglected when describing ethnographic research. Struggles and what these can say about the studied field are thus left behind, although they contribute to a richer understanding of the functioning of the chosen fields. This work will examine how passing the test and going through rituals of “becoming a member” can tell us more about the functioning of a government agency, here a Swedish border police unit.

States retain (socio-political) tools to govern the lives of their population and beyond. Such governing takes place in various offices, where frontline staff need to implement policies that are created at higher levels of the administrative and political hierarchy. This chapter proposes an in-depth view on work that is being done in Swiss resident registration offices, through an ethnographic lens. Following caseworkers in their daily work routines over an extended period allowed me to trace their practices and (in)formal approaches to their work. This chapter delves into longer field note extracts that allow for deeper contextuality. Two key themes that will be engaged with, hustling and shuffling, explore the presence of informality and the consequences that such informal practices have for institutional functioning. First, insights show that a high workload combined with a lack of resources, creates an air of hustling that pushes frontline staff to make up for shortcomings in resources by inventing new and more efficient ways to implement their work. Hustling goes beyond individual coping mechanisms; often embedded in collective routines and practices that are, however, not codified. Second, given the high amount of information, policies and laws frontline workers need to be familiar with, they shuffle around with knowledge and devise productive ways to communicate with each other while remaining able to process cases. As such, informality is neither the opposite to formality nor simply uncodified but can range from spontaneous solutions to established sets of practice that blur the boundary between formal and informal.