Direct democracy is often presented as the major originality of the Swiss political system and certainly constitutes the decisive factor in the development of all policy domains. Every legal change proposed by the government has to be approved by all potential veto players who could launch a referendum, which makes the state only weakly autonomous with societal interest (Kriesi 1998). Virtually all federal laws and international treaties are subject to optional referendum. A popular ballot is held if 50,000 citizens request it by way of petition, therefore it makes legislators very careful to satisfy all veto players. If ballots reach 100,000 citizens it allows them propose of an amendment to the constitution. Between 1960 and 2000, seven popular initiatives proposing to limit or reduce the number of foreigners were launched but none of them was successful. In essence, direct democracy has a considerable impact on immigration policy as every legal change is subject to approval of all significant political groups, which tend to slow down every reform.
In the post war period, due to a labour shortage and sustained economic growth the immigration policy in Switzerland has been quite liberal, but the rights of the immigrants has been rather restrictive (Piguet 2004). The Aliens Law (still in force) was established in 1931 and it is strongly marked by the uncertainty and xenophobia of that period. Its aim is to fight against “over-foreignazation”, a concept which is in debates up to the present day. This institutional framework was kept in the postwar period because of its high flexibility. Because of the high demands of the labour market, recruiting foreign workers was cheaper and more flexible. In case of a recession they can be sent back to their countries of origin.
The acquisition of Swiss citizenship is difficult, and procedures may vary between cantons. Applicants need to have at least 12 years of stay in the country, and their applications are subject to administrative control at three levels of government (communal, cantonal and federal). Also, children of foreigners born in Switzerland have no automatic right to Swiss citizenship. All this procedures were to discourage foreigners from applying. This approach to immigrants coupled with the sustained economic expansion of the postwar period, contributed to the creation of large population of “denizens”, people who are granted most social and economic rights, but no political rights (Hammar 1985), in countries such as Germany, Italy and Switzerland.
Until 2002, the Swiss government released three main types of stay permits for foreigners. The seasonal worker statute was an example of the Swiss conception of immigration, allowing workers to stay in the country for nine months but without right of family reunification or unemployment insurance. Second permit was a renewable annual permit allowing workers to stay for the whole year. While residence permits were permanent and granted most economic and social rights, but not political rights. The first two categories were very strict with immigrants, they couldn’t change profession nor move canton without authorization, and they had to leave the country if they lost their jobs.
When the Swiss economy was hit by the recession in the ’70s, a significant proportion of the workforce, around 180,000 foreign workers lost their jobs and they had to leave the country because their work permits were not renewed (Fluckiger 1998). Although the economy lost 258, 000 jobs in this period, unemployment increased just by 21,000 jobs (Webber 2001). For this reason the Swiss economy wasn’t so affected like the neighbour countries. They reduced the costs of economic change by reducing foreign employment six times more than for Swiss workers (Bonoli and Mach 2000).
Immigrant rights developed by the economic crisis of the 1990s therefore the Swiss labour market lost from its flexibility and it was no longer capable to send foreign workers back to their countries, as had been done in the 1970s. While in the ’70s the proportion of foreigners holding residence permits was only 21%, by 1990 the figure reached 60%. Things changed significantly because of the pressure from the sending countries. Immigrants were mainly from Western Europe and being part of the European Union they have been able to exert a great pressure on the government to improve immigrants’ social and legal condition. In 1964 the Swiss government concluded an agreement with Italy which improved the situation of Italian workers. Swiss government was forced to take this decision as 70% of foreign workers of that time were Italians and their labour market was experiencing a strong shortage. Agreements continued with Spain and Portugal so foreign workers gained acces to more stable permits and by 1989 only 20% of immigrant flows could be limited.
Another issue of the immigrant flow was regarded to the “wanted” and “unwanted” immigrants. Authorities were confused about which immigrants they need. On the one hand, multinational companies, Federal authorities and economic experts wish to admit mostly skilled workers, less liable to become unemployed; on the other hand, some cantons and economic sectors such as agriculture, hotel trade and catering are highly dependent o unskilled foreign labour. Because of the relatively weak autonomy of the Swiss Federal state, weak or declining industries had abundant, unskilled and cheap labour and as Swiss workers gained better jobs these sectors became more dependent on foreign labour. Indeed, one of the major characteristics of the Swiss labour market has been the big difference between well-paid, export-oriented sectors and low-paid domestic sectors (Fluckiger 1998; Bonoli and Mach 2000). Rural cantons tended to favour regional, low-productive sectors such as agriculture and catering so they were highly dependent on foreign labour therefore they were strongly opposed to reforms aimed to stop the flow of unskilled workers.
The improvements in the legal status of foreigners, the immigration policy advantaging low-skilled migration coupled with the non-existence of an integration policy explains why the labour market couldn’t cope anymore so successful with recession in the ’90s like in the ’70s. Indeed, the ’90s witnessed a kind of normalization of the Swiss economy and they had to face problems similar to its neighbours. Therefore unemployment experienced a high increase from 0.5% in 1990 to 5% in 1997. It is clear that the main cause of increasing unemployment was that foreign labour was no longer so “flexible”.
In 2003, around 20% of the total resident population represented people of foreign origin, 25% of the workforce and 41% of the unemployed (Egger 2003). The first measurements considered by the Swiss government to solve these issues were similar to those which had been tried by neighbour countries in the mid ’70s: stopping the flow of unskilled migration. But because of its limited power, Swiss government couldn’t do any significant changes. First major changes were due to acceleration of the process of European integration. Swiss authorities had to make significant changes to their admission policy, especially abolish the seasonal worker statute and in return they would benefit of the liberalization of the labour market at the European level. For the Swiss government, opening the borders to Western Europe meant reducing the inflow from outside Europe therefore in 1991 they established a model instituting three “circles”, corresponding to regions of immigration. First circle comprised the “traditional” sending countries of the EU, second circle the countries “culturally near” such as USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand and the third circle included all other countries from which only “indispensable” workers were to be admitted such as IT specialists, executives, etc. First the EEA agreement was voted down by a popular referendum but finally concluded in 2002 which put an end to the seasonal workers statute.
The agreement partially solved the migration issues of the Swiss economy, but there were still the integration problems. There weren’t any programmes or activities aiming the integration of foreigners. Therefore in 2000 a Federal ordinance on integration was adopted. A wide variety of programmes aimed at first and second generation immigrants were implanted in some cantons, while other cantons have created administrative positions in charge of integration programmes in the domain of education, language teaching or the re-qualification of the unemployed. But still there is a major opposition from right-wings movements, as they see, integration should not be a task for receiving society. In addition, financial problems can be considered major obstacles as often integration programmes are first victims of budgetary restrictions.
The central aim of the article has been to show how existing institutional arrangements and representations shape opportunities and limit the possibilities foe change in respect of migration-related policy in Switzerland. In my opinion direct democracy is a very powerful tool of the Swiss citizens which can use it in their personal benefit but they can use it to express their hostile sentiments towards immigrants as well. Their immigration policy was aimed exclusively to the wealthy condition of the economy and Swiss citizens. It was a very flexible and cleaver strategy but they were taking advantage and using foreign workers in an inhuman manner. During the recession periods first people who lost their jobs were foreigners, so basically they were forced to leave the country. The only thing that government was carrying about was to keep unemployment low and look after Swiss citizens in despite of the foreigners. I think that these decisions point out selfishness from Swiss authorities, because during the economic growth foreign workers helped Switzerland to develop. In return, the government has not given anything back but on the contrary during recession they were “abandoned” by the government. Every country should protect its national identity and try to improve people’s living standards but not despite other people. It has to be a balance between how a country benefits and what gives back to people who are helping it.
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