The story of naturalization in Western democracies in the past decades has been one of liberalization, with states claiming to have paved the way for new citizens to seize their full set of rights within their country of residence. However, the perspectives of migrants continue to be underrepresented within the scholarship, with only a handful of studies examining citizenship ‘from below’. Based on 15 semi-structured interviews with naturalized citizens conducted in the fall of 2021 in the governmental district of Cologne, this chapter focuses on the lived experiences of those moving through the process of acquiring German citizenship. The analysis finds firstly that questions of security and access to mobility are central to immigrants’ decision to naturalize, especially for those without EU citizenship. Secondly, new Germans view their legal status as evidence of their belonging and hope to gain social recognition through it. Thirdly, migrants’ bureaucratic trajectories point to the relevance of examining state-citizen interactions and their impact on the timing of when migrants naturalize.