This master's thesis examines how integration policies for refugees are implemented in Switzerland through a comparative institutional ethnography of the cantons of Valais and Geneva. Drawing on Dorothy Smith's institutional ethnography, the study explores how institutions, professional practices and institutional texts organize integration processes in everyday life.

The research focuses on the implementation of the Swiss Integration Agenda (Agenda Intégration Suisse – AIS), introduced in 2019 to support the social, educational and professional integration of refugees and provisionally admitted persons during their first years in Switzerland. The research is based on semi-structured interviews with professionals involved in integration services, periods of institutional immersion, and the analysis of legal and institutional documents.

The study adopts a reflexive standpoint informed by the researcher's own experience as a political refugee and examines how federal integration objectives are translated into local practices. The findings show that, despite a common national framework, important differences emerge between cantonal contexts in the organization of integration services, access to educational opportunities and the interpretation of integration goals. These differences influence the opportunities available to refugees and may contribute to the production of social inequalities.

More broadly, the thesis argues that integration should not be understood solely as an individual responsibility or a one-sided process of adaptation. Rather, it is a relational, interactional and institutional process shaped by political decisions, local contexts and unequal power relations. The study therefore contributes to sociological debates on migration, integration and institutional practices in Switzerland.