Background

FOREIGNERS FROM ABROAD

Foreign Infiltration to Enforcement Initiative

Switzerland has always had an ambivalent relationship with foreigners. Taking in asylum seekers is seen as a «noble duty». At the same time, the country relies on cheap labor from abroad. This is how it is today and the situation was also similar in the 1960s when thousands of Italians and Spaniards set out for Switzerland as seasonal workers. The objective has always been to limit the number of the foreign residents in Switzerland. The first major attempt of this kind was the so-called Schwarzenbach Initiative. The ballot measure demanded that the number of foreigners be limited to 10% of the total population. When the Swiss voted on it there was a record turnout of 74%. 46% of the voters were in favor, sending shock waves throughout Europe.

Over the past twenty years, the debate on foreigners has been fueled primarily by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP). The group has achieved three important victories in recent years: the adoption of an initiative that banned the construction of Minarets (2009), the approval of a ballot measure to tighten the deportation laws for foreign offenders (2010) as well as the initiative against «Mass Immigration» (2014). Although an initiative that demanded even tougher deportation rules was clearly rejected with 58.9% of votes, Switzerland’s policies against delinquent foreigners have been steadily become more radical.

According to one of the leading experts on migration law, Professor Alberto Achermann, Switzerland stands out internationally when it comes to dealing with second-generation foreign residents or «secondos» as they’re called in Switzerland. In an interview with the weekly newspaper WOZ, Achermann said: «When I ask foreign colleagues how they deal with secondos, they are amazed at my question because in other places the children of immigrants are not usually considered foreigners: in Germany they become — with certain restrictions — automatically naturalized.» In concrete terms, this means that none of ARADA’s three protagonists would have been expelled from Germany or Austria, for example. Switzerland is a special case not only because of its rigorous deportation laws but also because of its – in the international context — very restrictive naturalization practise.

HOMESICKNESS — THE SWISS DISEASE

Morbus Helveticus

Homesickness is the longing for being home while you’re abroad. The Basel-based physician Johannes Hofer first described this malady under the term «nostalgia» in 1688. It is also known as «Swiss disease» (Latin: morbus helveticus). The term was originally coined in reference to Swiss mercenaries in foreign armies who suffered from homesickness. According to the ideas of the time, it is a melancholy arising from an unsatisfied longing for home, which is said to result in a breakdown of physical health, exhaustion, fever and even death. In France, for instance, Swiss mercenaries were purportedly banned under penalty of death until the mid-eighteenth century from singing or whistling Kuhreihen (French: Ranz des Vaches), a well-known pastoral song in French-speaking Switzerland. The French authorities feared that by hearing the song Swiss mercenaries could not help feeling homesick and that the melody could even lead them to desert their army.

TURKS AND KURDS IN SWITZERLAND

The Turkish diaspora represents the sixth-largest immigrant group in Switzerland. Over 120,000 people of Turkish origin live in Switzerland. Nearly all have a permanent residency permit, even if more than half only have a Turkish passport. Around 45,000 Turkish immigrants have become Swiss.

Turkey is a country with a wide variety of religious, ethnic and cultural groups. The majority are Sunni Muslims. This social diversity is also evident in immigrants from Turkey. The largest and most visible groups are the Turks and Kurds. In addition to a Sunni Muslim majority, Switzerland has a large number of Alevi. Most people from Turkey live in German-speaking Switzerland, especially in the cantons of Zurich, Aargau, Basel-City and Basel-Country. While Turks with Turkish identity live primarily in the canton of Aargau, Kurdish-Turks live mainly in the Basel area. Across Switzerland, the number of Turkish-Kurds is estimated at 70,000; 12,000 of them live in the city of Basel. Proportionally, far more Turkish-Kurds live in Switzerland than in Germany, for instance.