Abstract
A popular initiative in support of regulating future immigration to Switzerland was accepted by the electorate in 2014. Assuming that the initiative acted as an exclusionary threat for current immigrants of Switzerland, we conducted an online survey among a sample of highly-skilled German-speaking immigrants (“expats”). Participants reported having experienced negative affect following the vote. Moreover, having a more left-wing orientation, living in a political constituency that had voted pro-regulation and having proportionally few Swiss friends positively predicted negative affect following the vote. Negative affect was associated with a reported negative change in one’s attitudes towards Switzerland, increased considerations to leave the country, and impaired satisfaction with life. In sum, the results suggest that a powerful exclusionary threat such as a national vote may be experienced as distressful by highly-skilled immigrants currently living in the country.
Highlights
On February 9th, 2014, the Swiss popular initiative “Against mass immigration”was put to the vote and accepted by the electorate
We suggest that a popular vote on immigration regulation represents a reallife exclusionary threat, which is characterized by several specific aspects: First, in the case of a popular vote, an individual is not threatened with exclusion because of some personal flaws, but because she or he possesses a specific group membership, namely a foreign citizenship [20, 43]
Given that the two votes were rather similar in content, these results suggest that participants in the present survey experienced the vote against mass immigration as some form of exclusionary threat, too
Summary
On February 9th, 2014, the Swiss popular initiative “Against mass immigration”was put to the vote and accepted by the electorate. Popular initiatives are a means of direct democracy in Switzerland and allow the Swiss people to suggest or change laws directly via nation-wide votes. The aim of this particular initiative was to limit immigration to Switzerland through quotas and thereby restrict the number of immigrants moving to Switzerland each year [1]. The initiative was strongly debated, but eventually accepted by a narrow majority of the electorate (50.3 percent) and of the cantons (member states of the federal state of Switzerland; 17 out of 26; [2]), which is necessary for a nation-wide initiative to succeed (for more details on Swiss direct democracy and popular votes, see [3]).
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