Last month Swiss voters narrowly
approved a proposal to limit the free movement of workers and their families to
the country. Switzerland is not a member
of the European Union, but it is a party to the Schengen agreement and is
closely bound to the EU (which completely surrounds the landlocked alpine
nation) through over 100 bilateral treaties.
Switzerland joined the Schengen Area in 2005 as a result of similar
popular referendum. That referendum,
held on June 5, 2005, had a markedly liberal outcome. On the ballot that day were two provisions,
both of which won
popular support: 1) Swiss adhesion to the Schengen free-movement agreement
and, 2) the introduction of registered same-sex partnerships. Voter turnout for the election was 2,745,267
or 56% of registered voters. The
Schengen agreement was passed by a majority of 54.6% (while the registration
provision passed by 58.0%). However, an
important ethnic split was apparent in the 2005 vote, with German speaking
Swiss generally opposing and French speaking Swiss generally in favor. This linguistic division
was replicated in the recent vote. French
speakers in the west largely opposed the measure, while Italian speakers in the
east supported the provision, with German speakers split.
The
February 2014 referendum was a decidedly conservative ballot, with issues that
were clearly geared toward motivating conservative voters. Turnout
for the vote was nearly identical with the 2005 vote at 55.8%, which is
considered high for referendum voting in Switzerland (which is usually around
40%). The immigration provision, which
institutes quotas for immigration, appeared on the ballot along with an
anti-abortion measure that would have dropped abortion procedures from public
health insurance. The abortion measure
was soundly defeated (with 69.8% opposed) while the immigration measure passed
by the barest
majority (with 50.3% in favor).
In many
respects the Swiss vote tracks rising anti-immigrant and anti-Schengen
sentiment in Europe. The anti-immigrant
proposal was driven by the efforts and funding of the Swiss People’s Party
(SVP), a rightwing party campaigning on a conservative nationalist
platform. The SVP is the largest party
in the Swiss lower house and is Eurosceptic,
anti-Islam and isolationist. Far-right
parties have been gaining political traction in France, Germany, Norway,
Netherlands and Britain using anti-immigrant platforms. However, in other respects the Swiss immigrant
profile is unique. Since Switzerland
signed on the free-movement agreement around 64,000
EU community members migrated annually with 69% of them highly
skilled. Nearly
a quarter of the Swiss population is foreign-born, which is four times the
average of other EU member states.
The
Swiss vote is particularly disconcerting given British Prime Minister David
Cameron’s announcement that his government is dedicated to
cutting immigration and negotiating limits on EU immigration to the
UK. Nigel
Farage, leader of the far-right UK Independence Party remarked on the vote,
applauding the Swiss “freedom to decide the number and skill level of who they
wish to invite to work or stay in their country”. While the UK is not party to the Schengen
agreement and is a limited member of the EU, restrictionist migration politics
have been gaining strength in the country.
Both the UK and Switzerland represent fringe EU countries in that
neither are a full member to the integration scheme. However, the recent focus on immigration,
continually and opportunistically cast as a threat to domestic employment,
hints at a much larger threat to regional integration, not only in Europe but
around the globe.
Regional
integration is the modern incarnation of globalization and a tool for
facilitating the interactions driving the global economy. Integration seeks to ease the flow of the
four factors of globalization: goods, services, finance and people. Regional integration schemes have been
largely successful with respect to the first three. With respect to the freer movement of people,
only the EU has taken steps to ensure the mobility of people as workers. The recent news in Switzerland is a blow to
this sole model of full integration. At
the heart of the issue is the “in group”-“out group” dynamics that have
dominated human societies since the rise of civilization. Modern humans are apt to easily accept
foreign goods, services and finance in their lives, but introducing foreign
people provokes a deep rooted fear that can be described as xenophobia, racism,
ethnocentrism, nationalism, jingoism or anti-immigrant sentiment. What this vote in Switzerland means for the
European project is far from clear, even a month later. This larger impact on regional integration
schemes around the globe is even less identifiable.
