I have my French naturalization interview coming up in a few weeks, and I’m feeling a bit nervous about it. I’ve been living in France for a while now, and I really want to be well-prepared for this step.
I know they will ask about my integration, my life in France, and some historical and cultural topics, but I was wondering if anyone here who has already gone through the process could share the types of questions they were asked?
From what I’ve read, they might ask about:
The main institutions of the Republic
Some historical events or famous figures
My motivation for becoming French
The 100 essential questions and other similar stuff on youtube are good. But don’t forget local politics, and current events. And try to think about your experience of France that you can feed in , favorite places to visit, and diversionary stories. I had got very interested in Marianne and read quite a bit about here, so on a couple of questions I went on at length about her.
So I think useful to have something up your sleeve that you can natter about. And just do as politicians do and completely ignore the question asked and talk about X .
And the most important question is why you want to be French!
My son was asked about mainly rules of his profession especially laiicité in the classroom. As he had done all his education in France, there was no point in historical questions and also having two french born children helped. Even after the interview it still took another year to hear anything and even then, they never notified him, just sent him a voting card and when he queried it, found out he was a dual french/british citizen and now has a french ID card.
We had ours last autumn @julia030 and we each were asked very different sorts of questions. We were both asked (different) history questions and of course the “why do you want to be French” one. I was surprised to be interrogated so closely on the subject of abortion - not just the law but what I thought about it. I was also asked some, to me, weird personal questions like “why it I leave it so long after separating before getting a divorce from my ex-husband”. This was dating back more than 25 years and hardly relevant to anything, I would have thought.
On a less controversial front, I was asked about the electoral process - when the last/next elections were and the names of the different bodies. They are clearly keen on how you demonstrate your level of integration. I waxed lyrical about the Associations we’re members of but my partner sensibly got attestations from the responsible officers to say that we were well integrated.
My partner thought that the questions they asked were those that were presented to them by the software - the person interviewing was frantically typing the entire time. I rather felt that it depended on the personality of the interviewer - mine was hostile and my partner’s was supportive.
In the end though, it’s the Interior Ministry who makes the decision so I’ve no idea how criticala part having a really good interview is in the grand scheme of things.
You sound as if you are doing good preparatory work and if you try to stay calm and not panic (easier said than done - I panicked!) you’ll be fine. If you weren’t nervous I think there would be something wrong with you
Please let us know how you get on - we’ll be sending support vibes…
