This thesis aims to better understand the changes occurring after the regularization of the residence permit in the lives of people who have lived and worked undocumented for years. It focuses on the case of Operation Papyrus, a regularization program implemented in Geneva, Switzerland, between 2017 and 2018. In this context, the people concerned were mainly women from non EU/EFTA countries in Geneva for an average of more than 10 years working as housekeepers, caregivers for older people, or babysitters and men employed in the restaurant, cleaning, or construction sectors. Situated at the intersection of three fields — the sociology of migration (particularly the one focusing on postmigration integration trajectories), life course research, and research on social stratification and mobility — this thesis aims to document and analyze the subjective experience of this transition and the evolution of the situations of regularized individuals by adopting a processual perspective.

Based on a longitudinal qualitative empirical approach, this thesis draws on 88 qualitative interviews conducted over four years with 39 individuals experiencing the new reality of living in a regular situation. The analysis, on the one hand, delves into whether and how, after years of constraints and uncertainties associated with undocumented life, regularization enables individuals to aspire to a more favorable future and provides them with the means to achieve it. On the other hand, it investigates the dynamics of vulnerability over time, examining how certain mechanisms of vulnerabilization specific to undocumented life disappear, transform, combine with others, or persist even after regularization, as well as the emergence of new mechanisms of vulnerabilization.