Path-dependent or dynamic? Cantonal integration policies between regional citizenship traditions and right populist party politics

Immigrant integration policies are commonly assumed to be shaped by traditional understandings of citizenship and belonging. Accordingly, such policy frameworks are considered path-dependent and thus stable over time. The recent surge of radical right anti-immigrant parties in many Western European countries challenges this stability-thesis. Several scholars contend that this change in the party political landscape caused an illiberal turn, resulting in more restrictive integration policies. This paper tests whether integration policies are indeed challenged by radical right parties, or whether they remain path-dependent policy frameworks, using subnational comparative analysis. The results of our cross-sectional regression analysis over twenty six Swiss cantons reveal that cantonal integration policies reflect clear patterns of regional citizenship culture, suggesting that they remain stable policy frameworks. By contrast, the considerable electoral success of the right populist Swiss People's Party (SVP) over the last two decades did not directly result in more restrictive cantonal integration policies

Switzerland – Really Europe's Heart of Darkness?

Immigration is a prominent and contested global topic of contemporary politics. Several recent popular votes targeting migration such as the minaret initiative, the automatic deportation initiative, and most recently the vote on “mass immigration”, evoke however the impression that Switzerland sets particularly harsh standards in migration policy. Based on historical evidence on Swiss migration policy making and comparative analyses on current cantonal integration policy outputs, I argue that ‐ while far from being a new phenomenon ‐ immigrant scepticism has become a more relevant factor of Swiss migration policy making than ever. Yet, immigration and immigrant scepticism do not only challenge direct democratic Switzerland, but all destination countries of immigration

Taking Cantonal Variations of Integration Policy Seriously — or How to Validate International Concepts at the Subnational Comparative Level

Subnational varieties of immigrant integration policy, which are particularly salient in federal states, remain largely neglected by migration studies. Following Lijphart, who long demanded to verify international research at the subnational level, this study aims at capturing subnational policy variations using the example of Swiss cantons. In line with international approaches, cantonal integration policies are conceptualized and measured in terms of immigrants’ ease or difficulty of access to civic, political, socio‐structural, as well as cultural and religious rights and obligations. The transfer of an international concept to the subnational level facilitates a validation of the former, which constitutes a second neglected research field. Finally, a look at the empirical evidence allows testing the construct validity of our measurement: in line with theoretical assumptions, our data reveal a clear linguistic divide, an institutionalised “Röschtigraben”, with German speaking cantons exhibiting overall more restrictive policies than Latin cantons

Swiss Immigration Federalism

In Switzerland, sub-national regulation in the field of immigration has developed mainly in relation to immigrant integration, whereas the areas of immigrant selection and immigration enforcement remain predominantly regulated by the central government. The current regulatory situation can be read as the result of three interacting factors: Switzerland’s pronounced federal system, the country’s former guest-worker approach to immigration and the bottom up nature of local processes of immigrant integration. Two principles characterize Switzerland’s federalism; subsidiarity and executive federalism. Accordingly, cantons are not only the main responsible units for all areas which are not or only partially regulated at the national level, such as integration policy, but they can also decide how to implement existing national law, for instance in the field of immigration policy. As challenges related to immigrant integration arose primarily at the local city level where most immigrants live, cities and urban cantons were the first to formulate formal regulations and informal guidelines in this policy field. By contrast, the national government, long time neglected the topic of immigrant integration; a typical reaction for former guest-worker countries which were assuming that, eventually, the guest-workers would return to their countries of origin. To this day, national regulations on integration remain minimal and are worded in a very open way, which leaves the cantons considerable liberty in formulating their own integration policies. Considering ongoing political debates within Switzerland, opinions vary on whether the cantonal variety of integration policies is rather beneficial or detrimental. On the one hand, opponents contend that subnational policy variations constitute a potential source of structural discrimination for immigrants, and that the heterogeneous puzzle of cantonal integration policies challenges the formulation of a coherent national strategy in the field. Proponents of cantonal autonomy, on the other hand, argue that adapted, context specific solutions for the local issue of immigrant integration are better than a “one size fits all” national framework and that Switzerland’s federalist laboratory facilitates the evolution of cantonal best practices. This policy-learning potential could be used more systematically, for instance by fostering inter-cantonal exchange

Reciprocity as a trigger of social cooperation in contemporary immigration societies?

While the system stabilizing function of reciprocity is widely acknowledged, much less attention has been paid to the argument that reciprocity might initiate social cooperation in the first place. This paper tests Gouldner’s early assumption that reciprocity may act as a ‘starting mechanism’ of social cooperation in consolidating societies. The empirical test scenario builds on unequal civic engagement between immigrants and nationals, as this engagement gap can be read as a lack of social cooperation in consolidating immigration societies. Empirical analyses using survey data on reciprocal norms and based on Bayesian hierarchical modelling lend support for Gouldner’s thesis, underlining thereby the relevance of reciprocity in today’s increasingly diverse societies: individual norms of altruistic reciprocity elevate immigrants’ propensity to volunteer, reducing thereby the engagement gap between immigrants and natives in the area of informal volunteering. In other words, compliance with altruistic reciprocity may trigger cooperation in social strata, where it is less likely to occur. The positive moderation of the informal engagement gap through altruistic reciprocity turns out to be most pronounced for immigrants who are least likely to engage in informal volunteering, meaning low, but also highly educated immigrants

Reciprocity and volunteering

This paper evaluates whether volunteering is imbued with altruistic or strategic reciprocity. Although scholars have intensively studied the motivations and social norms to volunteer, to date there is no agreement why human beings perform activities in which time is freely given up in order to benefit another person, group or organization. We argue that attitudes towards reciprocity and volunteering are related, but that this relationship becomes only visible if we refine the conceptual framework for both concepts. Using data from the Swiss Volunteering Survey 2009, the empirical results of our Bayesian multilevel models show the following: firstly, individuals exhibiting high levels of altruistic reciprocity are more likely to engage in informal volunteering; secondly, we find a negative relationship between altruist reciprocity and the individual likeliness to do voluntary work within non-solidary associations; thirdly, once individuals opted to engage in formal volunteering, we find that strategic reciprocity is clearly related to voluntary engagement in non-solidary associations. Overall, our conceptual foundation provides a more appropriate model to explain the formation of volunteering

Ethnic Diversity, Social Trust and the Moderating Role of Subnational Integration Policy

Increasing ethnic diversity and whether or not it impacts on social trust are highly debated topics. Numerous studies report a negative relationship between diversity and trust, particularly in the United States. A growing body of follow-up studies has examined the extent to which these findings can be transferred to Europe, but the results remain inconclusive. Moving beyond the discussion of the mere existence or absence of diversity effects on trust, this study is concerned with the moderation of this relationship. It addresses the neglected role of subnational integration policies influencing the impact of diversity on trust. Empirical tests not only indicate that integration policies moderate the relationship but also suggest that the influence of policies varies substantively according to the specific policy aspect under consideration

Identifying context and cause in small-N settings: a comparative multilevel analysis

Qualitative small-N comparisons face the challenge to detect context-bound causality under conditions of limited empirical diversity. Rather than treating context as a causal factor, we test the usefulness of the novel method of comparative multilevel analysis (CMA) to identify and understand the role of context as a contingent necessary condition that enables a causal relationship to unfold. Combining CMA with pairwise comparisons, we assess how organ donation policies in Switzerland and Spain affect relatives’ refusal rates in a small-N setting exhibiting multiple contextual levels. To tackle limited diversity systematically, we suggest to refine the CMA methodology by accounting for several contexts and referring to higher-order constructs. Applying CMA with these refinements, we find voluntary information measures only affect refusal rates in contexts of a credible state explicitly supporting organ donation. The fact that CMA can easily be combined with other analytical and conceptual approaches makes it an effective technique to identify contextual effects in small-N research

Consenting to Exclude? Empirical Patterns of Democracy and Immigrant Integration Policy

Studies explaining immigrant integration policies commonly focus on single aspects such as right-populist party politics or the immigration legacy of a country. This neglects the overall character of the democratic system within which policy-making unfolds. Research on empirical patterns of democracy, in turn, suggests that consensus democracies pursue ‘kinder and gentler’ policies and outperform majoritarian democracies in terms of minority representation. The article tests whether this conclusion holds for the specific group of immigrant minorities and analyses the relationship between patterns of democracy and immigrant integration policy using a new dataset on empirical democracies in 30 European and North American countries. Simultaneously estimating the character of democratic systems in terms of power dispersion and its effect on integration policies, the analysis reveals a distinct ‘Janus-faced’ pattern: while proportional power dispersion tends to coincide with more inclusive immigrant integration policies, pronounced veto structures tend to foster exclusion

Do Integration Policies Affect Immigrants' Voluntary Engagement? An Exploration at Switzerland's Subnational Level

This paper investigates whether integration policies influence immigrants' propensity to volunteer, the latter being an important element of immigrants' integration into the host society. By distinguishing different categories of integration policies at Switzerland's subnational level and applying a Bayesian multilevel approach, our results suggest varying policy effects: while policies fostering socio-structural rights enhance immigrants' propensity to volunteer, we observe a negative curvilinear relationship between cultural rights and obligations and immigrants' volunteerism implying that a combination of cultural entitlements and obligations is most conducive to immigrants' civic engagement