Swiss Exceptionalism or the Beginning of an End?

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.  

Economic crisis and new immigration trends and fallout

As the European debt crisis grinds on, immigration continues to inch toward the center of political debate, especially in Southern Europe.  A startling rise in xenophobic Greek activists and the bully-pulpit commandeered by the extreme right-wing party Golden Dawn should give EU leaders pause.  While Golden Dawn holds only 6.9% of the unicameral Greek legislature, less than the Greek Communist Party, the impact on immigration politics cannot be understated.  The EU took an unprecedented step of sanctioning Austria in 1999 when the far right, anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPO) took second in legislative elections.  The sanctions were quickly lifted, but the FPO has fallen only slightly in popularity.  The fear in Europe is the re-emergence of a radical, nationalist right which in the modern world pivots on the issues of immigration as a proxy for race, religion and class.  

As the economic outlook deteriorates further and further, pressure mounts from nativist segments of society to curtail immigration and limit immigrants’ rights.  Greece is currently the hotspot for European immigration as FRONTEX reports land crossings between Greece and Turkey spiking in 2010.  While this shift may be the result of increased spending on interdiction efforts at sea, it is also likely that the economic downturn has modified the cost-benefit structure of immigration to Europe.  That is to say, Europe is becoming less of a magnet for immigrants due to the prolonged economic and political turmoil.

As witnessed in the United States, the most effective means for stemming the tide of “unwanted” immigration is economic stagnation.  A well-publicized, but perhaps under-recognized Pew Research publication declared that Mexican immigration to the US has fallen to net zero.  This is a subtlety shocking development considering the recent history of Mexican immigration to the US and the resultant political overreactions and polarizations.  It does not appear that the political imagination of the nation has yet grasped this polarity shift in immigration to US.  Immigration remains synonymous with Mexican in the popular discourse.  However, this trend is not an anomaly.  

Various studies find parallels in Europe, this despite several intervening variables not present in the US-Mexico migration order. The first being a much wider gap in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) per capita between Europe and its direct southern neighbors than between the US and Mexico.  According to World Bank statistics, average Mexican PPP per capita is 30% of that of the US, while the PPP per capita differential between only Italy, Spain and Greece and northern African countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt is only 22%.  This brief comparison does not take into account income disparities in more remote migrant origins such as the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.    A second important factor has been the “Arab Spring” which launched many countries along Europe’s southern border into political and economic chaos.  The results have not been as dire as some predicted because while foreign investment and tourism receipts fell dramatically, rising commodity prices, especially oil, have offset some of the impact.  Regardless, this socio-political shift has spurred extraordinary immigration to Europe, in turn fueling anti-immigration rhetoric within Europe.  Witness the spat between France and Italy as France temporarily closed its border to prevent the entry of immigrants fleeing the violence in Libia, many of whom landed in Lampedusa, Italy.  Essentially, immigration to Europe is slowing despite persistent push-factor pressure.

The take-away from both of the European and American cases is by no means clear.  Economic downturn has coincided with heightened enforcement and border pushback, so it is nearly impossible to single out a key driving factor.  While immigration has not played any noticeable role in the US presidential elections, it has become an important political touchstone in European elections.  Perhaps the most interesting fallout from this glacial shift in the global migration order is the reversal of some migration flows to and from Europe.  While the trend is still only nascent, Spanish emigrants are increasingly heading to destinations in Latin America to escape the unchecked deterioration of the Spanish economy.  There are signs that Greeks are increasingly crossing the Bosphorus against the traditional tide of immigration to look for opportunities in Turkey. It is still too early to tell if these signs of movement will indeed ripen into migration trends, but the coming decade will certainly be marked by new global immigration trends.