The "Sociologic" of Postmigration: A Study in the Early History of Social Research on Migration and Integration in Switzerland, 1960–73 (original) (raw)

2019, Barbara Lüthi & Damir Skenderovic (eds.), Switzerland and Migration. Historical and Current Perspectives on a Changing Landscape (Palgrave Studies in Migration History), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,

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This study examines the historical development of social research on migration and integration in Switzerland from 1960 to 1973, with emphasis on the creation of an 'active' assimilation policy during a period of economic growth and changing immigration patterns. Key works by migration scholars Rudolf Braun and Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny are analyzed to illustrate the impact of social research on shaping the discourse around Swiss immigration and foreign worker policies, highlighting the intertwining of knowledge production, social realities, and political agendas.

Immigration policies, state discourses on foreigners, and the politics of identity in Switzerland

Rethinking Immigration and Citizenship: New Spaces of Migrant Transnationalism and Belonging, 2006

The role of state discourses in the construction of 'otherness' and in the production of inequality has become a major issue during a time of increasing changes in migration flows, of an increased presence of nationalist parties and of increasingly restrictive immigration policies in Europe. This paper examines historical shifts in the representation of foreigners within Swiss state discourses and the effects of these shifts on the integration of immigrants into Swiss society. As state discourses regarding foreigners significantly changed after the First World War, the emphasis of immigration policies shifted from a facilitating to a constraining approach. Überfremdung, the notion that excessive numbers of foreigners can threaten Swiss identity, emerged as one of the most influential discourses in Switzerland and provided the foundation for a quantitative and qualitative strategy of defence against the immigration, settlement, and naturalisation of foreigners. In recent years, however, an agreement on freedom of movement between Switzerland and the European Union has been struck, and immigration policies have once again adopted a facilitating stance. Since this applies only to citizens of the European Union, a stratified system of immigrant rights has been continued and perpetuated. At the same time, right-wing parties, which have recently risen to power, have successfully used Überfremdung propaganda to persuade Swiss populations to vote against the relaxation of conditions for the naturalisation of foreigners, thus ensuring that immigrants will be excluded from access to citizenship rights over generations. The politics of immigration in Switzerland is above all a politics of national identity.

Coping with deviance: Swiss nationhood in the long nineteenth century

Nations and Nationalism, 2011

This article highlights two processes that shaped Swiss nationhood in the long nineteenth century. The first concerns the competition between different nation-states and the nationalist visions these contests engendered. In a Europe dominated by the norm of the culturally and ethnically homogenous nation, the Swiss authorities, public intellectuals and various political representatives were desperate to display an image of national authenticity to the outside world. The result was a nationalism that combined voluntaristic and organic elements. In the second and main part of this article, the focus turns on citizenship; it is conceived not only as a social and legal institution, but also as a cognitive prism through which people defined their membership in the national community. Remarkably, the authority in granting national citizenship to foreign nationals remained firmly in the hands of the cantons and, above all, the Swiss municipalities. In practical terms, this meant that the Gemeinde provided the institutional and cognitive frame through which nationhood was primarily experienced, imagined and defined. While Switzerland represents a particularly strong case of a communalist polity, it should not be treated as unique. Instead, it should alert us to a potentially fertile yet little-explored area of research: what might be called the communal embededdness of the national(ist) imagination.

Immigration and Integration Policy in Switzerland, 1848 to 2014

Swiss Political Science Review, 2015

The regulation of immigration and how immigrants are treated once they setle in a country are fundamental aspects of national policy. Existing descriptions of the developments of immigration and integration policy have either provided a limited snapshot, or relied on the author's subjective assessment of how policies developed over time. In this research note, we provide a systematic and truly historical assessment of immigration and integration policy in Switzerland: between the foundation of modern Switzerland in 1848 and 2014. The most recent MIPEX questionnaire was used to provide a systematic and multidimensional portrait of how immigration and integration policy has evolved in Switzerland. Using these data, we identify three distinctive periods (expansive, restricting, expanding), and argue that the changes in policies refect the fact that immigrants are increasingly accepted as a permanent feature of Swiss society.

Who belongs to the swiss body politique—A diaspora perspective

Frontiers in political science, 2023

In this paper, I try to better understand the intersection between "integration" in legal terms, and how long-term resident "non-citizens" and migrants from the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) situate themselves in narratives of belonging vis a vis the normative power structure that constitutes the Swiss body politique. More specifically, how do labor and forced migrants from former Yugoslavia negotiate the shifting understanding of "integration" in Switzerland in legal and social terms? Former Yugoslavs constitute not only a comparatively large number of "non-citizens" in Switzerland, but individuals from-and-with-connections to this community also embody numerous labels and categories of migrant that statistical databases, the media, and legal practices attach to them since the s. Key findings in this paper illustrate a two-tiered narrative: "non-citizens" seemed to have maintain(ed) their pursuit of not attracting attention to their persona-a strategy that allowed individuals to disappear within the larger society. Ensuing Europeanization processes, coupled with the Wars of Yugoslav Succession during the s, however, brought to the fore "a politics of rupture" that called into question othering processes, and the seemingly tightening sociolegal basis of belonging to the Swiss body politique. Hitherto examined data suggests that interlocutors pursue a "positive essentialist frame" to counter exclusionary narratives "non-citizens" experience to postulate "rights claims". Interviewees, in other words, activate diaspora connections and networks to support and aid each other when legal and socio-political questions arise, but also to actively influence the political and legal landscape in Switzerland.

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Western Europe and the rest of it: the Swiss perspective

in T. Kavaliauskas (ed.) Conversations about Transcultural European Memory, Vilnius: Publishing House of Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences, pp. 149-166 (co-authors: C. Giordano, F. Ruegg, & T. Kavaliauskas) , 2014