3 - The Making of Swiss Immigration Policy

Summary

This chapter lays out the making of Swiss economic immigration policy from the late 1940s to the mid-2010s. It begins with the establishment of Switzerland’s guest worker regime with the signing of the Swiss-Italian recruitment treaty in 1948. The second case study traces a series of regulatory reforms over the course of the 1960s, culminating in the creation of the global ceiling system in 1970. The chapter’s third case study is the Three Circles Policy which sought to reconcile the diplomatic imperative of free movement of European workers with the populist calls for closure. The chapter’s final case study examines policy making in the 2000s as the Swiss government opted for a treaty-based approach to market integration, followed by the 2008 immigration act which codified the policy changes enacted through bilateral treaties and executive directives over the previous years. In 2014, Swiss voters adopted the Mass Immigration Initiative which presented policy makers with the impossible choice between legislating the people’s will or maintaining its bilateral treaties with the European Union.