The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime
Electronic Data Infrastructures and Statistics in the Federal Administration, 1960s-1990s
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- Authors: Kijan Espahangizi, Moritz Mähr
- Title: The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime: Electronic Data Infrastructures and Statistics in the Federal Administration, 1960s-1990s
- Journal: Journal of Migration History, Volume 6, Issue 3, 2020, pp. 379-404
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/23519924-00603005
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journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
brill.com/jmh
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime:
Electronic Data Infrastructures and Statistics
in the Federal Administration, 1960s–1990s
Kijan Espahangizi
Center “History of Knowledge”, ETH Zurich & University of Zurich,
Switzerland
espahangizi@wiss.gess.ethz.ch
Moritz Mähr
Chair for History of Technology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
maehr.moritz@history.gess.ethz.ch
Abstract
The article analyses the transformation of Swiss migration statistics through digital
data processing in the 1970s and 1980s. It focuses on the emergence of two different
modes of migration statistics management within the Swiss federal administration.
First, in the early 1970s, the Swiss Federal Aliens Police implemented an electronic da-
tabase with comprehensive statistics on foreigners, the so-called Central Aliens Regis-
ter. It was devised as a data-driven instrument for regulating labour supply within the
scope of the Western European guest worker regime. Then, in the mid-1980s, the Swiss
Federal Statistical Office introduced periodical population scenario analysis. The mod-
elling of future demographic scenarios, based on existing data, shifted the perspective
towards a new global migration framework. It is shown how this computerisation of
statistical data infrastructures in the 1970s/1980s enabled the combination of different
regulatory regimes for population movements within the federal administration
(labour/asylum), thus, contributing to the formation of a Swiss migration regime.
Keywords
migration regime – Switzerland – statistics – data infrastructures – data-driven
policies – public administration – demography – population movements
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/23519924-00603005
380 Espahangizi and Mähr
1 Introduction
In 2008, the Swiss government launched the Central Migration Information
System (cemis) with well over 11 million individual entries. This database sup-
plies not only the Swiss authorities, but also the various organisations respon-
sible for international migration management, on a European as well as a
global level, with individual data and aggregated statistical information.1 Sta-
tistical data on migratory movements are a crucial asset for national and su-
pranational institutions to devise their policies and to inform their decision-
making.2 From a history of knowledge perspective, they play a fundamental
role for the ‘politics of large numbers’ that shaped the manifold measures of
modern nation-states to control, regulate and contain population movements
within and across borders.3 The emergence and development of these ‘migra-
tion regimes’ in the twentieth century has become a key focus of migration
history.4 In today’s era of (big) data-driven governance, the underlying data
gathering, storing and processing infrastructures of a given statistical appara-
tus are of special interest.5 Socio-technical infrastructures and their relat-
ed classification systems not only represent, but also shape, the perception
of migratory dynamics.6 More than that, they contribute to the production of
1 Emmanuel Comte and Simone Paoli, ‘The narrowing-down of the oeec/oecd migration
functions, 1947–1986’, in: Matthieu Leimgruber and Matthias Schmelzer (eds.), The oecd and
the international political economy since 1948 (Basingstoke 2017) 261–284; Fabian Georgi, Man-
aging migration? Eine kritische Geschichte der Internationalen Organisation für Migration
(iom) (Berlin 2019).
2 For recent social research see for example: Stephan Scheel, Evelyn Ruppert and Funda Ustek
Spilda, ‘Enacting migration through data practices’, Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space 37:4 (2019) 579–588. For the role of the census in Switzerland since the nineteenth
century in relation to immigration issues see: Gérald Arlettaz and Silvia Arlettaz, La Suisse et
les étrangers: immigration et formation nationale, 1848–1933 (Lausanne 2004).
3 Theodore M. Porter, Trust in numbers. The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life
(Princeton, NJ 1995); Alain Desrosières, The politics of large numbers. A history of statistical
reasoning (Cambridge, MA 1998); Hans Ulrich Jost and Carlo Malaguerra, Von Zahlen, Politik
und Macht. Geschichte der schweizerischen Statistik (Zürich 2016), Kijan Espahangizi and
Monika Wulz, ‘The political and the epistemic in the twentieth century: historical perspec-
tives’, KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge 4:2 (2020) 1–14.
4 Andreas Pott, Christoph Rass and Frank Wolff (eds.), Was ist ein Migrationsregime? What is a
Migration Regime? (Wiesbaden 2018).
5 Brigitta Kuster and Vassilis Tsianos, ‘How to liquefy a body on the move: Eurodac and the
making of the European digital border’, in: Raphael Bossong and Helen Carrapico (eds.), EU
borders and shifting internal security: technology externalization and accountability (Heidel-
berg 2016) 45–63.
6 Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick-Schiller, ‘Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-
state building, migration and the social sciences’, Global Networks 4 (2002) 301–334; Dirk
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 381
new social realities and subjectivities of migration.7 In order to understand
this capacity of migration data infrastructures to ‘co-construct society and
technology’, it is important to look at their development over time.8 Historical
path dependencies – often unknown to today’s users – have determined the
way in which migration data is produced and managed today. The case of the
Swiss state shows that the introduction of electronic data infrastructures be-
ginning in the 1960s and 1970s – a key moment in the history of digitalisation9 –
has not only shaped and changed migration policies, but also the way in which
the public administration itself is organised.10 Last but not least, computerised
statistical tools contributed to the rise of a new perception of migration within
the Swiss state after the global recession in the mid-1970s.
In the following, we examine the history of the two key modes of migration
statistics, their corresponding electronic data infrastructures and personal
networks that emerged within the Swiss federal administration after the Sec-
ond World War: first, the creation of the Central Aliens Register (car) in the
1960s and 1970s in the context of the post-war European guest worker regime,11
and second, the introduction of a global migration framework to Swiss demog-
raphy at the Federal Statistical Office (fso) in the 1980s.12 This shift in statistical
Hoerder, Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen, ‘Terminologies and concepts of migration re-
search’, in: Klaus J. Bade et al. (eds.), The encyclopedia of European migration and minori-
ties: from the seventeenth century to the present (Cambridge 2007), xxv–xlii; Adam McKe-
own, Melancholy order. Asian migration and the globalization of borders (New York 2008);
Yann Stricker, ‘“International Migration” between empire and nation. The statistical con-
struction of an ambiguous global category in the International Labour Office in the 1920s’,
Ethnicities 19:3 (2019) 469–485.
7 Ian Hacking, Historical ontology (Cambridge, MA 2002).
8 Paul N. Edwards, ‘Infrastructure and modernity: force, time, and social organization in the
history of sociotechnical’, in: Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey and Andrew Feenberg (eds.),
Modernity and technology (Cambridge, MA 2003) 185–225, 189.
9 David Gugerli, Wie die Welt in den Computer kam: Zur Entstehung digitaler Wirklichkeit
(Frankfurt am Main 2018).
10 André Holenstein, Patrick Kury and Kristina Schulz, Schweizer Migrationsgeschichte. Von
den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Baden 2018).
11 In German: Zentrales Ausländerregister. We translated the term Ausländer as ‘alien’ when-
ever it refers to a legal distinction and as ‘foreigner’ if it refers to a broader cultural imagi-
nation of being foreign. Guido Koller, ‘The central register of foreigners. A short history of
early digitisation in the Swiss federal administration’, Media in Action 1 (2017) 81–92; Mat-
thias Hirt, Die Schweizerische Bundesverwaltung im Umgang mit der Arbeitsmigration:
Sozial-, kultur-, und staatspolitische Aspekte von 1960 bis 1972 (Saarbrücken 2009); Marcel
Berlinghoff, Das Ende der “Gastarbeit”: Europäische Anwerbestopps 1970–1974 (Paderborn
2013); Rita Chin, The crisis of multiculturalism in Europe. A history (Princeton, NJ 2017).
12 Jost, Von Zahlen, Politik und Macht.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
382 Espahangizi and Mähr
perspective contributed to the formation of the Swiss migration regime in the
1990s.
The methodological framework of migration regime analysis has proven to
be very productive for writing the history of governing human mobility. Yet,
this approach tends to overlook the historicity of its basic notion – migration –
by suggesting an ahistorical common denominator or preestablished categori-
cal connection between different forms of human mobility. Here, we start from
the reverse perspective to ask how and why different mobility regimes – most
importantly labour allocation and asylum law – were increasingly grouped to-
gether under the umbrella term ‘migration’ in the Swiss public administration,
on a policy level but also with regard to underlying material infrastructures, in
the 1980s.13 The merging of different databases of alien nationals into the
Central Migration Information System in the 2000s is one illustrative outcome
of this process of integration.14 Focusing on the development of electronic da-
tabases and statistics on migration in the public administration reveals a con-
stitutive thread in the genealogy of this integrated Swiss migration regime.
2 The Making of the Central Aliens Register and the Emergence of a
Data-Driven Labour Market and Admissions Policy in Switzerland,
1960s-1970s
In the spring of 1974, the first automated electronic database for foreign na-
tionals living and working in Switzerland was established. The Swiss federal
administration’s so-called Central Aliens Register (car) kept a record of the
‘foreign population’ by tracking changes in residence and work permits, up-
dated daily. Every month, the Electronic Computing Centre of the Federal
Administration, which hosted the car, aggregated the data and compiled sev-
eral dozen statistical reports for various stakeholders. The federal government
used this data to determine quotas for work and residence permits for alien
13 This does not imply that no earlier connections and synergies exist in the administration
and governance of international labour allocation and asylum requests in Switzerland on
a legal, institutional, practical or discursive level. This historical interconnectedness, how-
ever, took on a new quality as different mobility regimes were gradually integrated into a
comprehensive migration framework beginning in the 1980s. See Kijan Espahangizi,
‘“Migration” – Ein neues Konzept zwischen Politik und Wissenschaft in der Schweiz,
1987–1995’, Zeitschrift für Migrationsforschung / Journal of Migration Studies 1:1 (2020, in
print).
14 Hans-Rudolf Wicker, ‘Migration, Migrationspolitik und Migrationsforschung’, in: Hans-
Rudolf Wicker, Rosita Fibbi and Werner Haug (eds.), Migration und die Schweiz (Zurich
2003) 12–64, 15.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 383
nationals, which had been introduced in Switzerland since 1963. Once a year,
the aggregated statistical data was shared with international organisations in-
cluding the oecd, which monitored the international allocation and distribu-
tion of labour within the Western European guest worker system. When the
car became fully operational in 1974, the Swiss state completed the imple-
mentation of a data-driven and centralised labour market and admissions
policy, a process which had started a decade earlier. By introducing an elec-
tronic data infrastructure and statistical apparatus that promised effective ‘cy-
bernetic control’ of the labour supply, the Swiss government hoped to meet the
different demands of the international labour market, the national economy,
domestic politics and the Swiss public.
2.1 Swiss Foreign Worker Employment after the Second World War
Since the Swiss industrial sector withstood the Second World War without ma-
jor damage, domestic production recovered quickly. In 1948, the Swiss state
became a member of the emerging Organisation for European Economic
Co-operation (oeec) and participated in negotiations on the allocation of
labour within the framework of the Marshall Plan.15 That year, the first recruit-
ment agreement with Italy, which stemmed from the exchange within the
oeec Manpower Committee, marked Switzerland’s official entry into the
emerging European guest worker regime.
The post-war employment of ‘foreign workers’, as they were called by the
Swiss public, drew on earlier legislation introduced between the two World
Wars. The Federal Act on Residence and Settlement of Foreigners (1931/1934),
which had been passed in times of global economic crises, closely linked
labour market and admissions policy and created a fine-tuned system of tem-
porary work and residence permits: seasonal, cross-border, annual, and perma-
nent. The Federal Aliens Police (fap), founded after the First World War, was
responsible for processing permit applications, overseeing the whole admis-
sion system and coordinating with cantonal aliens police offices.16 It also had a
legal mandate to monitor the degree of ‘overforeignisation’ (Überfremdung) – a
term coined in Switzerland in the early twentieth century – which was mea-
sured by the absolute and relative number of foreign nationals in the resident
15 Thomas Gees, Die Schweiz im Europäisierungsprozess: Wirtschafts- und gesellschaftspoli-
tische Konzepte am Beispiel der Arbeitsmigrations-, Agrar- und Wissenschaftspolitik, 1947–
1974 (Zurich 2006).
16 The German term Fremdenpolizei draws on a broader idea of policing strangers and for-
eign elements in Swiss society. See Patrick Kury, Über Fremde reden. Überfremdungsdis-
kurs und Ausgrenzung in der Schweiz, 1900–1945 (Zurich 2003).
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
384 Espahangizi and Mähr
population.17 After the Second World War, the Swiss state mobilised existing
federal legislation and its administrative apparatus to organise the interna-
tional labour supply necessary for the economic boom. All in all, the Swiss
government pursued a liberal admissions policy after the war, willingly meet-
ing the demands of the national economy for cheap labour. Economic sectors
with seasonally fluctuating labour demands (such as tourism, the construction
industry and agriculture) would thus receive foreign workers arriving on short-
term permits of only a few months. At the end of the season, these workers
would go back to their families and home countries, before returning to Swit-
zerland for the following season. The Swiss post-war foreign employment – in
tune with the Western European guest worker system – was based on a ‘rota-
tion principle’ that did not plan for family reunification or settlement. More-
over, when economic growth slowed, the foreign workforce could be used as a
human ‘economic buffer’ by restricting admission.18
In the early 1960s, however, political pressure on the Swiss government to
change its foreign worker employment policy increased substantially, due to
various reasons: the growing competition for workers on the international
labour market, a growing concern of the Italian state and international organ-
isations with regard to the social costs of the rotation policy as well as the pres-
sure from various relevant political actors within Switzerland against the rising
degree of ‘overforeignisation’ – in 1960, foreign nationals made up 10.8 per cent
of the resident population of Switzerland.19 Experts also worried about the
negative structural effects of foreign worker employment on the Swiss econo-
my, such as fuelling inflation and reducing the incentive for innovation and
rationalisation in production.20
2.2 Towards the Rationalisation of Swiss Labour Market Policy in
the 1960s
As early as 1961 – comparatively early within the European context – the direc-
tor of the Federal Industry, Trade and Labour Office Max Holzer (1902–1974)
recognised the need to react to the changing situation. In order to develop al-
ternative policies, he created and chaired a ‘Study Commission on the Problem
of Foreign Labour’ which included representatives from various state offices as
17 Ibid.
18 Berlinghoff, Das Ende der “Gastarbeit”, 75–97.
19 Marc Vuilleumier, Flüchtlinge und Immigranten in der Schweiz: Ein historischer Überblick
(Zurich 1992) 100.
20 biga, Das Problem der ausländischen Arbeitskräfte: Bericht der Studienkommission für das
Problem der ausländischen Arbeitskräfte (Bern 1964).
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 385
well as academic experts.21 In its final report, the commission agreed with the
general demand for a policy change that would restrict the admission of for-
eign workers through a quota system in order to curb both growth and infla-
tion. At the same time, it acknowledged – for the first time – the Swiss econo-
my’s structural need for foreign labour. In order to implement this policy, an
organisational change within the public administration was required. Instead
of leaving admissions to the cantons and the economy, the commission advo-
cated a further centralisation of control and decision-making on the federal
level. Based on reliable, up-to-date data, a federal admissions system could be
enforced, and political demands could be better harmonised with the needs
of the economy.22 This technocratic approach was also in tune with contempo-
rary expert debates within international organisations. The oecd’s Manpow-
er Committee, as well as the statisticians of the International Labour Office
(ilo), supported the idea that labour supply as well as unemployment could
be controlled by a centralised, data-driven admissions regime. Max Holzer,
initiator of the study commission, was part of the Swiss delegation on both
committees.23
The technocratic craze taking hold among public servants and scientific ex-
perts after the Second World War was fuelled by the advent of cybernetics and
computers.24 From the 1950s onwards, the use of computers as counting and
calculating machines for administrative tasks had spread in industry and pub-
lic administration. The successful automation of the US-American census at
the beginning of the 1950s and costly marketing campaigns by US computer
manufacturers had motivated many European statistical offices to purchase
computers. In view of the economic boom and the shortage of skilled workers,
the enthusiasm for computers in industry was already high in Switzerland, and
by the 1960s, this euphoria had spread to politics and public administration.25
The Swiss Federal Statistical Office purchased its first ibm computer in 1960,
21 Kijan Espahangizi, ‘The “sociologic” of postmigration. A study in the early history of social
research on migration and integration in Switzerland, 1960–73’, in: Barbara Lüthi and
Damir Skenderovic (eds.), Switzerland and migration: Historical and current perspectives
on a changing landscape (Basingstoke 2019) 33–59.
22 biga, Das Problem der ausländischen Arbeitskräfte, 188.
23 Jost, Von Zahlen, Politik und Macht, 75–93; Comte and Paoli, ‘The narrowing-down of the
oeec/oecd migration functions’, 261–283.
24 Andrew Pickering, ‘Cyborg history and the World War ii regime’, Perspectives on Science 1
(1995) 1–47; Jon Agar, The government machine. A revolutionary history of the computer
(Cambridge, MA 2003).
25 Gugerli, Wie die Welt in den Computer kam; Nick Schwery, ‘Die Maschine regieren:
Computer und eidgenössische Bundesverwaltung, 1958–1965’, in: Preprints zur Kulturge-
schichte der Technik 29 (2018), https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000243303 (4 August 2019).
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
386 Espahangizi and Mähr
laying the groundwork for the Federal Administration’s Electronic Computing
Centre, which would come to host the car in the 1970s.
2.3 A New Quota System and the Reform of Swiss ‘Foreigner Statistics’,
1964–1979
In the early 1960s, the Italian government was able to force Switzerland to re-
negotiate the 1948 recruitment agreement, as its negotiating position had been
improved due to growing competition on the European labour market. In ac-
cordance with oecd criteria, the Italian government demanded better work-
ing conditions, access to the social security system and more permissive settle-
ment conditions for their citizens abroad. After tough negotiations, a new
recruitment agreement was signed in 1964, the same year the Study Commis-
sion on the Problem of Foreign Labour’s report was published.26 Swiss conces-
sions in the agreement provoked outrage among trade unions and above
all within the emerging right-wing populist movement. By late 1964, the xeno-
phobic ‘National Action against the Overforeignisation of the People and our
Home Country’ (Nationale Aktion) Party began to collect the necessary signa-
tures for a popular initiative to severely restrict immigration.27 As a reaction to
the widespread dissatisfaction, the Swiss government followed the recommen-
dations of the study commission and introduced a quota system for foreign
workers (Plafonierung) – initially only at the level of individual companies,
then on the level of economic sectors.28 This restriction on foreign worker em-
ployment was met with fierce criticism from both the private sector and the
cantons who considered the measure to be too rigid, inflexible, and even harm-
ful to market innovation. As a result, popular as well as parliamentary political
discussions became increasingly heated.
With the introduction of the quota system, reliable statistical information
on foreign worker employment and residence in Switzerland transformed into
a key component of political negotiation and governmental action. Statistical
data on foreigners had been collected rather unsystematically since the imple-
mentation of the aliens’ police regime after the First World War – by the fed-
eral and cantonal aliens police offices, communal residents registration offices
and statistical offices. Yet the reliability of these figures was poor, data gather-
ing was not standardised and the resulting numbers produced by the various
26 Hirt, Die Schweizerische Bundesverwaltung, 56–71.
27 Switzerland allows direct democratic initiatives to amend the constitution, if supported
by 100,000 signatures. Damir Skenderovic and Gianni D’Amato, Mit dem Fremden politisie-
ren: Rechtspopulistische Parteien und Migrationspolitik in der Schweiz seit den 1960er Jahren
(Zurich 2008).
28 Hirt, Die Schweizerische Bundesverwaltung, 31–68.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 387
authorities differed substantially. Behind the scenes, the federal administra-
tion therefore began preparations for a new and improved ‘foreigner statistics’,
convening experts in mid-1966.29 The working group consisted primarily of
civil servants from the Federal Industry, Trade and Labour Office, the cantonal
and federal aliens police offices as well as statisticians and two computer spe-
cialists from the Electronic Computing Centre. In order to ensure broad accep-
tance for the new centralised approach, the director of the Federal Industry,
Trade and Labour Office Max Holzer handed over the leadership of the work-
ing group to Theo Keller (1901–1980), a renowned professor of economics and
later president of the University of St. Gallen.
Born in 1902, Holzer had been professionally socialised within the corporat-
ist culture of Swiss politics which tended to get things done in closed-door
meetings between male representatives of the state administration, the politi-
cal class and the economy. With his academic background and strong ties to
economists and sociologists, however, Holzer was well aware of the need for
rationalisation within the public administration based on scientific methods
and knowledge. At least within his area of responsibility, he opened doors for
a new generation of civil servants with a strong background in scientific meth-
ods and the social sciences. For the working group, he appointed André Kipfer,
a young statistician at his office with a PhD in economics, who was also a mem-
ber of the delegation representing Switzerland at the ilo Conferences of
Labour Statisticians. Kipfer would play a crucial role in setting up the Central
Aliens Register. In March 1967, the working group’s final report delivered an
analysis of the status quo, an outline for a transitional solution to improve the
existing ‘foreigner statistics’, and a proposal for an entirely new comprehensive
statistical apparatus, including a thorough assessment of any organisational,
financial and legal consequences.30
2.4 Centralising Immigration Data and the Role of the Federal
Aliens Police
One crucial parameter for the new federal labour market policy recommended
by the study commission continued to be the development of the ‘stock of
foreigners’, a figure considered to be a valid indicator for the degree of ‘overfor-
eignisation’. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Swiss discourse sur-
rounding ‘overforeignisation’ was revived in the mid-1960s, carried forward by
a pronounced fear of communist agitation instigated by trade unionists and
29 Mandate for members of the Expert Commission on Statistics on Foreigners, in: Swiss
Federal Archives (sfa), E7170B#1977/67#368*.
30 Report of the Expert Commission on Statistics on Foreigners, in: sfa, E7001C#1978/59#954*.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
388 Espahangizi and Mähr
leftist foreign workers and combined with a historically rooted xenophobia of
‘culturally different strangers’ and visible minorities.31 In the mid-1960s, as
more and more voices in the Swiss public raised concerns with regard to the
‘foreign worker problem’, the Federal Aliens Police seized the moment and be-
gan to publish its figures under the telling title ‘overforeignisation statistics’ –
with a substantial margin of error. For a relatively small federal authority such
as the fap, the government’s plan to introduce an entirely new apparatus for
‘foreigner statistics’ provided an opportunity to strengthen its position within
the federal administration. The expert working group’s report remained vague
on the exact organisational integration of the new ‘foreigner statistics’, merely
stipulating that the new database should be run at the federal administration’s
computer centre. The working group’s basic premise was to base the new sta-
tistics on foreigners on a permanent central inventory. All foreigners and their
personal data were to be registered in the initial database by a certain date,
with subsequent changes and new entries added daily. As gathering informa-
tion on foreign nationals was part of the fap’s remit, it was necessary to place
the new Central Aliens Register under its authority, i.e. within the jurisdic-
tion of the Federal Department of Justice and Police – even though the process
had been initiated by the Federal Department of Economic Affairs. This
also meant that the legalistic logic of the fap would come to shape the new
statistical apparatus: the car would only register alien nationals, more specifi-
cally foreign workers, and reflect a strong bias towards the containment of
‘overforeignisation’.
The planned new statistics on foreigners required not only a centralised
data management system, but also standardised processes for data collection
and processing. This gave the fap an implicit control function over the can-
tonal aliens’ police offices as well as over the nearly 3,000 communal residents
registration authorities. In the face of the massive attempt at standardisation
in a traditionally bottom-up federalist system, the budget of the fap had to be
adjusted. A centrally managed aliens register was costly in terms of not only
programming and technical operation, but also personnel. Centralised data
keeping also entailed further technical and organisational problems, which
had been addressed in the working group’s report. In order to keep the volume
of data as small as possible, only those characteristics needed to identify a giv-
en foreigner were to be collected; nonetheless, the number of entries and mu-
tations to be processed would be in the millions. Despite the fact that the fed-
eral administration’s computer centre had no previous experience in handling
such large amounts of data, the challenges identified were primarily on the
31 Skenderovic and D’Amato, Mit dem Fremden politisieren.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 389
organisational side, for example with regard to the cooperation between the
fap, the federal administration’s computer centre, the Federal Social Insur-
ance Office and the Central Social Insurance Compensation Office. The assign-
ment of social security numbers to foreign nationals who had been granted a
work permit represented a major uncertainty. To tackle this issue and to unam-
biguously identify foreigners, the Federal Social Insurance Office planned to
introduce a new eleven-digit social security number.32 Yet, this measure did
not prevent many foreigners from receiving several different numbers during
the car’s introductory phase. Legal questions also remained. It was unclear,
for example, whether the first survey could be based on the Federal Statistics
Act, or whether the fap even had the right to request data directly from local
authorities in the first place. The financial requirements, though, were the
greatest challenge. The work group estimated that operation of the register
would cost more than two million Swiss francs a year (ca. 500,000 usd in 1967).
Cantons and municipalities would receive a portion of these funds in compen-
sation, whereas the larger share was to be spent on automation and hiring an
additional 40–60 employees. The car turned out to be by far the most expen-
sive statistical project ever attempted by the federal administration. In addi-
tion to all these challenges, there was the political situation: as the working
group worked out the basics of the car, the public debate on ‘overforeignisa-
tion’ became more acute and demands to act quickly became louder. The right-
wing Nationale Aktion party finally launched its popular initiative which aimed
at forcing the government to restrict immigration by limiting the number of
foreigners in each canton to 10 per cent, with the exception of international
Geneva.
2.5 The Implementation of the Central Aliens Register, 1969–1974
During its 1969 autumn session, the Swiss parliament discussed the upcoming
popular initiative against ‘overforeignisation’ scheduled for June 1970. There
was great uncertainty among parliamentarians about the possible impact of
the initiative on the Swiss economy. Despite government measures to intro-
duce quotas for companies and for certain economic sectors, the number of
foreigners in the country seemed to be rising inexorably, reaching roughly a
million at the end of the decade. Yet, it was difficult to provide exact statistical
figures due to the lack of coordination and standardisation of even basic
questions – such as, should seasonal workers be counted as part of the resident
32 Jérôme Brugger, ‘At the dawn of Swiss e-government: planning and use of a unique identi-
fier in the public administration in the 1970s’, Administration & Society 50:9 (2018)
1319–1334.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
390 Espahangizi and Mähr
population or not?33 The fact that the numbers mentioned during the session
varied substantially further heightened tensions.34 Not wanting to make a final
decision on the introduction of the aliens register until all technical and organ-
isational issues had been solved, the federal government was now accused of
delaying the project. But there were also political reasons for the predominant-
ly conservative federal government’s hesitation. On the one hand, it was on
principal opposed to interventionist measures, urging the private sector to
take responsibility for itself. On the other hand, many cantons resisted federal
interference in their sovereignty.
With the vote drawing closer, it appeared more and more as if the right-wing
initiative against ‘overforeignisation’ would succeed at the ballot box. The fed-
eral government abruptly changed course in order to prevent a major political
defeat.35 In early 1970, it decided to introduce a general quota system for
immigration – on the national level. At the same time, it decided to finally set
up the automated statistical apparatus of the car, a decisive component for
the performance of the regulatory regime. The general immigration restriction
was intended to appease right-wing and trade union circles, while a prudent,
data-driven labour market policy was meant to ensure an efficient allocation
of the available labour force. Another working group was swiftly convened to
implement the car, under the authority of the Federal Aliens Police.36 André
Kipfer, the statistician from Holzer’s Federal Industry, Trade and Labour Office
who had participated in the 1967 working group was now appointed to lead the
second working group, alongside Kaspar König, the head of the fap’s legal ser-
vice. In the following years, these two civil servants built up both the car and
their careers together: Kipfer was appointed Chief of the car in 1973 and König
became Deputy Director of the fap in 1974.
The implementation of the car began in 1971, even after the popular initia-
tive of the Nationale Aktion was rejected at the ballot box by a narrow margin,
with a series of test runs in selected cantons, which uncovered further issues
such as the fact that social security numbers were only issued to employed
foreigners with a residence permit. Since this number should be part of
their unique identification key in the register, the extremely large number
33 Werner Haug, ‘Und es kamen Menschen’. Ausländerpolitik und Fremdarbeit in der Schweiz,
1914–1980 (Basel 1980) 60 and 73.
34 ‘Volksbegehren gegen die Überfremdung. Bericht des Bundesrates’, Amtsdruckschriften
iv:3 (1967) 529–546.
35 Applications and reports from various federal departments, in: sfa, E1004.1#1000/9#754*.
36 Invitations to the members of the working group ‘Central Aliens Register’, in: sfa,
E4300C-01#1998/299#31*; Minutes of the first meeting of the working group, in: sfa,
E4300C-01#1998/299#31*.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 391
of cross-border commuters from Germany, France, Austria and Italy would not
be recorded in the car. Moreover, the federal authorities had to standardise
the forms (mostly paper) that were used in cantonal offices and local commu-
nities, although large municipalities with modern infrastructure wanted to de-
liver their data on magnetic tapes. The integration of these different data for-
mats into the car pushed costs upward and delayed the project by several
months.
It took until March 1974 for the car to finally become fully operational, with
quotas for foreigners meticulously calculated and widely distributed on a
monthly basis. The new data-driven foreign employment policy was soon
celebrated as a great success.37 And indeed, from 1970 to mid-1973, the ‘stabili-
sation’ of the number of resident foreigners, one of the main goals of the
Swiss governments, seemed promising. However, this was still only true on pa-
per in regard to those foreigners who were registered in the car. In reality, the
number of foreign workers continued to grow. Certain cantons circumvented
the restrictions by issuing border crossing permits that were not subject to
controls.38
2.6 After the Boom – New Uses for the car
In a mere historical coincidence, shortly after the introduction of an ambitious
electronic data infrastructure for regulating foreign worker employment and
‘overforeignisation’, Switzerland was hit by the global recession that followed
the 1973 oil embargo. After more than two decades, the economic boom – the
main driver for the growing employment of foreign workers – had come to an
end. Demand for labour declined sharply and unemployment rose. Yet, com-
pared to other countries such as Germany, Switzerland’s economy got off
lightly – not because of the new data-driven immigration regulation appara-
tus, but because of the economic buffer function, which kicked in years after
the rotational principle had officially been abandoned. Many foreigners in
Switzerland lost their residence permits along with their jobs and had to re-
turn to their home countries. With more than 200,000 foreign workers and
their families leaving the country, unemployment was essentially ‘exported’ to
the sending countries. The Swiss government would seize the moment and
change its policy goal from a ‘stabilisation’ of the number of foreigners to a
reduction.39
37 Speech by Federal Councillor Kurt Furgler in the National Council, 20 September 1976, in:
sfa, E4300C-01#1998/299#14*.
38 Georg Kreis, ‘Grenzgänger’, in: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, 23 January 2007, https://
hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/007843/2007-01-23/ (30 July 2019).
39 Furgler’s Speech in: sfa, E4300C-01#1998/299#14*.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
392 Espahangizi and Mähr
In response to the recession of the mid-1970s, the pressure to save money
and to reduce budgets in the federal administration increased, including for
the Federal Aliens Police. The car faced a possible problem of legitimacy. On
the one hand, the aliens register had turned out to be far more expensive than
planned; on the other, the number of permits collapsed with the economic
crisis. In their search for new possible applications for their statistical appara-
tus, the fap was inspired by West Germany. Since 1967, the Federal Republic
had maintained an automated central register for foreigners which was geared
more towards surveillance and control and which had been expanded into an
integrated personal information system.40 The successes of the computer
search in West Germany in the fight against the terrorist Rote Armee Fraktion
(Red Army Faction) seemed to legitimise a further expansion of the car. Thus,
over the course of the 1970s, the fap expanded the car’s table programmes in
order to retrieve relevant information. The register was used by various au-
thorities to identify violations (mainly related to the length of stay or to unde-
clared work), to carry out identity checks and to investigate individuals and
their tax and debt status. This was particularly important in the case of sea-
sonal and short-term residents who rarely deregistered and often returned to a
different municipality or canton the following season. Against the backdrop of
the widespread anti-communist paranoia, the fap even started to gather lists
of foreign journalists who lived or worked in Switzerland.41 The Swiss state’s
secret files scandal, revealed in 1989, suggests that the car served as a role
model in registering the whole population, not only foreigners.42
Although the car fell short of the high expectations of the 1960s and early
1970s, its impact on the development of the Swiss migration regime should not
be underestimated. The centralisation of data management resulted in a har-
monisation of the processes of public administration. The federal government
and the fap in particular were able to expand their competencies further and
to curb the power of the cantonal authorities with regard to the regulation of
immigration. The centralised, standardised and automated car also left hard-
ly any room for regional peculiarities and individual cases. From now on, it was
only possible to do what could be mapped in the electronic system of the fed-
eral data infrastructure.
40 Note to Dr. König: Further development of the Central Register of Foreigners in West
Germany, in: sfa, E4300C-01#1998/299#13*.
41 David Gugerli and Hannes Mangold, ‘Betriebssysteme und Computerfahndung. Zur
Genese einer digitalen’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 42:1 (2016) 144–176.
42 Lucas Federer, ‘Aktiv fichiert’, in: Lucas Federer, Gleb J. Albert and Monika Dommann
(eds.), Archive des Aktivismus: Schweizer Trotzkist*innen im Kalten Krieg (Zürich 2018)
1–18.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 393
In general, the car remained stuck in the logic of controlling ‘overforeigni-
sation’ embodied by the aliens’ police. Nonetheless, its introduction marks the
transition to a rationalised data-driven labour market and admissions policy.
Although the car was in fact not able to regulate the labour supply, the statis-
tics it produced proved to be indispensable for policy makers in need of labour
market analysis. The structural need in the Swiss economy for a foreign work-
force, identified by the study commission in 1961, persisted after the post-war
boom. Accurate and up-to-date statistical data was becoming a more and more
important currency, not only within the state administration, in politics and
for the public, but also in international and supranational contexts. The car
made its figures available and continued to contribute reliable data to organ-
isations like the ilo, the oecd, and the UN, as well as the statistical offices of
the European Free Trade Association efta and the European Community in
the years that followed.
3 The Swiss Federal Administration’s Discovery of Global Migration:
The Emergence of a New Mode of Migration Statistics in the 1980s
In the 1970s, both the post-war economic boom and the Western European
guest worker system had come to an end, also in Switzerland. At the same
time, the perception of migratory dynamics started to shift in the international
debates on global population development which followed the famous 1972
Club of Rome report on the limits of growth. Organisations like the UN, the
ilo, and the oecd were increasingly worried about the growing gap between
the rapid population growth in the ‘Third World’ and the shrinking ageing pop-
ulation in ‘developed’ industrial countries like Switzerland.43 Against this
backdrop, a new mode of migration statistics entered the Swiss public admin-
istration, which differed substantially from the logic of the car. In the 1980s,
the Federal Statistical Office started to develop so-called ‘population scenarios’
which introduced a global migration framework to Swiss demographic statis-
tics and played an important role in shifting the perspective of the state
authorities. While these population scenarios were based on the centralised
electronic data infrastructures of the guest worker era, most importantly the
car, they simultaneously introduced new exploratory forms of data processing
43 Werner Haug, ‘Ausblick auf die Zukunft der schweizerischen Bevölkerung: Bevölker-
ungsperspektiven 1986–2025’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft und Statistik
124:2 (1988) 193–210, 201.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
394 Espahangizi and Mähr
in order to tackle growing concerns about the future of the Swiss population in
the ‘age of migration’.44
3.1 Prospect Studies and Population Scenarios, 1983–1986
In January 1983, the Swiss government ordered so-called ‘prospect studies
(Perspektivstudien)’ on a regular basis, not least in response to the Global 2000
report of the US-government on environmental, socio-economic and demo-
graphic developments.45 The ‘prospect staff’ of the federal administration led
the designated working group, which also included representatives from the
two major state-owned companies, the sbb (railway and public transport) and
the ptt (post, telephone and telegraph). The St. Gallen Centre for Futurology
(sgzz), a private thinktank, contributed reports on economic development;
the demographic department of the Federal Statistical Office was charged with
developing the ‘population scenarios’.
Unlike traditional prognostic modelling techniques – e.g. statistical demo-
graphic projections46 – these new scenario studies, which had gained in popu-
larity after the economic crisis of the 1970s, did not base their forecasts on
mathematical extrapolation and well-defined probabilities.47 Instead, they
provided an epistemic tool to explore the future, perceived as increasingly un-
certain, in quantitative and qualitative terms. Compared to mortality and fer-
tility, the natural demographic factors that had been at the centre of demo-
graphic research since the nineteenth century, global migration dynamics
posed a greater challenge for prognostic modelling. Such dynamics depended
on sudden political decisions, unforeseen events and crises such as coup
d’états, wars, and natural disasters. In order to design hypotheses-based sce-
narios, a heterogeneous collection of factors had to be considered – not only
information on past developments, but also present-day political targets and
restrictions and assumptions about a range of possibly relevant sociological,
cultural, and economic developments and events.48 In the context of a wider
reorganisation of its knowledge production policies, the Swiss government
44 Stephen Castles and Mark James Miller, The age of migration. International population
movements in the modern world (Basingstoke 1993).
45 ‘82.461 Postulat Bäumlin – Bericht “Global 2000”, 24 June 1982’, Amtliches Bulletin der
Bundesversammlung V:winter (1982) 1789–1799, hermes Projektantrag Szenario, 9 Febru-
ary 1984 in: sfa, E1010C#2009/102#89.
46 Eidgenössisches Statistisches Amt, Bevölkerungsprojektionen für die Schweiz, 1976–2006.
Beiträge zur schweizerischen Statistik 43 (Bern 1977) 5 and 12.
47 Patrick Kupper, ‘Szenarien. Genese und Wirkung eines Verfahrens der Zukunftsbestim-
mung’, in: Georg Pfleiderer and Harald Matern (eds.), Die Krise der Zukunft I. Apokalyp-
tische Diskurse in interdisziplinärer Diskussion (Baden-Baden 2020) 126–181.
48 Francesco Kneschaurek, Das richtige Zukunftsbild (St. Gallen 1982) 18 and 26–29.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 395
implemented scenario analysis in order to keep up with the growing com
plexities and challenges in a changing global economy. The practice of gener-
ating statistical knowledge through population scenarios turned into a strate-
gic asset for the Swiss state, which would guide long-term policy decisions
within the federal administration, including, for example, social security
calculations.49
The demography department at the fso had already produced its first
scenario-based population study for a UN project as early as 1980 – but without
taking migration into account.50 The same was true for the first study submit-
ted to the prospect staff by the fso, published in 1985,51 which focused on the
development of fertility rates in Switzerland between 1985 and 2025 – an issue
of great concern since the mid-1960s in response to falling birth-rates in West-
ern countries.52 For the second prospect study, prepared in the autumn of 1986
and published in 1987, the fso changed track and the population scenarios
began to highlight the role of global migration in the development of the Swiss
population for the first time.
The population scenarios were based on the so-called espop database
(statistique de l’état annuel de la population), which provided annually updated
data on the state and structure of the resident population of Switzerland and
which had also been developed by the fso.53 espop was in fact the first demo-
graphic database in Switzerland to combine data on the movements of the
whole resident population – Swiss as well as alien nationals – in a systematic
way, drawing from national census data, data from municipal resident regis-
ters, and data on foreigners gathered by the Central Aliens Register.54 The po-
litical frame of reference for the car data infrastructure was labour market
policy. From that vantage point, established under the jurisdiction of the Fed-
eral Department of Justice and Police, the concept of the alien resident mainly
49 ‘Report on the tenth ahv (old age- & survivor’s insurance) revision’, Bundesblatt ii:15
(1990) 1–24, 20.
50 On the printouts of the study, the computer-generated tables note: ‘migrations null’.
Scénarios d’évolution de la population résidante 1980–2040, Préparés à l’aide du pro-
gramme de l’onu (1980), in: sfa, E3321#1998/304#26*.
51 Bundesamt für Statistik, Szenarien zur Entwicklung der Bevölkerung in der Schweiz, 1984–
2025 (Bern 1985).
52 Eidgenössisches Statistisches Amt, Die Entwicklung der Fruchtbarkeit in der Schweiz.
Beiträge zur schweizerischen Statistik 42 (Bern 1977).
53 Thérèse Huissoud, Martin Schuler and Hans Steffen, Les migrations en Suisse entre 1981 et
1993 une analyse des statistiques de l’état annuel de la population et des migrations espop
(Bern 1996).
54 ‘Verordnung über die eidgenössische Statistik des jährlichen Bevölkerungsstandes’, Sam-
mlung der eidgenössischen Gesetze 46 (18 November 1980) 1699–1670.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
396 Espahangizi and Mähr
referred to foreign workers, and less so to (the, at the time, comparatively small
number of) refugees. In the 1980s, however, perceptions started to shift towards
a more integrated global and sociological view, not least due to the rising num-
bers of non-European asylum seekers. In the fso, which was under the juris-
diction of the Federal Department of Home Affairs, a new mode of migration
statistics and data processing was developed. It took until the second prospect
study in 1986/87 for the relationship between migration statistics and Swiss
demography to change qualitatively in comparison to the established statisti-
cal mode of the aliens police.
3.2 Global Migration Dynamics and the Future of the Swiss Population,
1986–1987
In 1986, the prospect staff of the federal administration agreed to work with
three hypotheses on future migration proposed by the fso team, led by Wer-
ner Haug (born 1951), the new head of the demography department who had
recently joined the team.55 The first scenario ‘stabilisation’ (2A-86) set out
from the policy on labour migration and foreign workers hotly negotiated
before the global economic crisis in the mid-1970s. It targeted a stable propor-
tion of foreigners in the resident population or – in the adjusted terminolo-
gy of Swiss government of the 1980s – a ‘balanced ratio’ between foreign
and native population. The second, ‘closed Switzerland’ scenario (2B-86) took
a rather unrealistic starting point of zero immigration, which was under-
stood as a kind of null hypothesis. The third, ‘increased immigration’ (2C-86)
scenario calculated the effects of new external global ‘migration pressures’ on
Switzerland.
In accordance with ongoing international debates, Haug was convinced that
the picture of an ageing Switzerland would remain incomplete if the effects of
global migration – understood as a symptom of a changing world order – were
not considered. He argued that substantial population growth in Africa and
Asia created an ‘increasing migration pressure’ from ‘developing countries’ to-
wards Western nations.56 More immigration to Switzerland seemed inevitable.
With the arrival of asylum seekers in Switzerland from the global South in the
early 1980s, this argument resonated not only with available statistical data and
international scientific debates but also with a growing awareness in politics
55 Notes of the meetings of the prospect staff on 24 November 1986 and 14 May 1987, in: sfa,
E1010C#2009/102#89. See also the documentation of the study for the media: Bundesamt
für Statistik, Presserohstoff. Szenarien zur Entwicklung der Bevölkerung in der Schweiz,
1986–2025 (Bern 1987).
56 Haug, ‘Ausblick auf die Zukunft’, 210.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 397
and in the general public.57 At that time, Tamils were the first larger group of
non-European refugees to arrive in Switzerland on their own. Not part of an of-
ficial humanitarian contingent of refugees, which had mostly been the case af-
ter Second World War, they arrived and applied for asylum as individuals – and
they did not fit the Cold War picture that had previously framed the reception
of refugees in Switzerland. To the experts in Swiss humanitarian and refugee
aid organisations – like Haug himself, who had worked for the Swiss Red Cross
before joining the fso – the arrival of non-European asylum seekers heralded
the start of a new age of global immigration to Switzerland, a fact which now
needed to be taken into account, not least in the Swiss federal administration’s
population scenarios.58 With this new narrative framing, Haug shifted the ho-
rizon of the prospect study far beyond the scope of the Swiss or even European
labour market. Moreover, Haug translated the scenario from a technical hy-
pothesis – ‘2C-86’ – into a story not only experts but also other employees of
the public administration and the public in general could relate to. However,
the underlying idea of the ‘increased immigration’ scenario was potentially ex-
plosive. It introduced and explored a demographic option that seemed valid
from a statistical perspective, but less so from the viewpoint of right-wing pop-
ulist parties who began to agitate very effectively against the assumed threat
of a ‘flood’ of non-European asylum seekers in the 1980s, invoking the poten-
tial ecological collapse of the small country through overpopulation.59 On the
contrary, the fso’s study posed a question: could ‘increased immigration’ be
a way to compensate until 2025 for the ageing Swiss population? In contrast
to the legalistic distinction in demographic statistics between Swiss nation-
als and foreigners, dominant since the nineteenth century, the population
scenarios remodelled the resident population of Switzerland as a sociological
whole. Seen from this perspective (and keeping in mind a future Swiss society
that would depend on immigration), the traditional demographic distinction
between ‘natural’ factors (mortality, fertility) and in contrast seemingly ‘un-
natural’ factors like migration seemed to be less relevant.
The politically explosive force of the ‘increased immigration’ (2C-86) sce-
nario was already apparent in the negotiations within the working group.60
When the prospect staff presented the results of their second population
study, it was hardly surprising that the Swiss government decided to follow
57 Skenderovic and D’Amato, Mit dem Fremden politisieren.
58 Interview with Walter Schmid (head of the Swiss Refugee Aid in the 1980s) on 7 December
2017 in Zurich by Kijan Espahangizi.
59 ‘Ob Schweizer oder Ausländer, ist nicht die Frage’, Die Weltwoche 46 (17 November 1988) 43.
60 Notes of the workgroup meetings of the prospect staff on 6 May 1987, in: sfa,
E1010C#2009/102#89.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
398 Espahangizi and Mähr
established political lines in its choice of a main scenario: 2A-86 respectively
‘stabilisation’. Despite the government’s political choice to stick with the hard-
won compromises and policies of the 1970s, the 1987 population scenarios con-
tributed to the emergence of a different logic for understanding and governing
population movements within the Swiss state. They did so in three ways: first,
by introducing a global framework to migration statistics; second, by choosing
a sociological instead of legalistic approach; and third, by integrating different
areas of governance and data production on migratory movements. Thus, the
fso’s population scenarios did not distinguish between international work-
force allocation, asylum seekers and family reunification. Already the espop
datasets used for the scenarios conflated different forms of migratory mobility.
In order to bring these traditionally distinct fields of governance together, the
umbrella term of ‘migration’ was introduced – a word without previous appli-
cation in the Swiss public administration before the late 1980s, used only as a
foreign word at international conferences. The story of Werner Haug, who be-
came the head of the fso demography department in 1986 and was responsi-
ble for the 1987 scenario, exemplifies the crucial role a new generation in pub-
lic administration played in introducing new perspectives on migration that
had emerged in international expert debates, humanitarian contexts, scientific
communities and social movements since the 1970s.
3.3 A Generational Change in Swiss Public Administration
Werner Haug’s biography brings together various historical threads impor-
tant to understanding the development of a new perspective on migration
within the Swiss state.61 Inspired by his father Hans Haug (1921–1995) who
was a legal scholar, humanitarian intellectual and head of the Swiss Red
Cross (src) until the early 1980s, Werner Haug volunteered for the src from
the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. He established its refugee relief section and
gained first-hand experience of global population movements in src refugee
camps as a student.62 Haug studied sociology in Bern and Marburg (Germa-
ny), where he completed a master thesis on Swiss demography, immigration
and female labour, published in 1978, which included a critical examination
of the car’s role in the foreign worker quota system.63 He also published a
61 Interview with Werner Haug on 22 November 2017 in Bern by Kijan Espahangizi.
62 See for example his reflections on the relationship between ‘The Refugees and Us’ and
’The world-wide problem of refugees and the work of the src’, Schweizerisches Rotes
Kreuz, 93:4 (1984) 17 & 22.
63 Werner Haug, Einwanderung, Frauenarbeit, Mutterschaft. Probleme der schweizerischen
Bevölkerungsentwicklung und Bevölkerungspolitik, 1945–1976 (Bern 1978).
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 399
popular book on Swiss immigration and integration policies for the so-called
Mitenand-Initiative (Together-initiative), a nationwide coalition in solidarity
with ‘foreign workers’.64 The movement brought together a broad range of or-
ganisations and individuals, from the churches to the radical left, to take a stand
for a ‘more humane’ immigration law. Haug was not himself an activist but he
shared the initiative’s humanitarian views on migration,65 in contrast to the
predominantly nationalist Cold War mindset of the aliens police, which was
still widespread within the Swiss public administration at that time. Through
this younger generation exemplified by Haug, the Swiss public administration
was slowly confronted with the internationalism of the new social movements
of the 1960s and 1970s.
In addition to his humanitarian views, Werner Haug pursued a new socio-
logical approach to demographics and migration which played an important
role in his work at the fso. One important source for Haug’s approach had
been the work of his doctoral supervisor: Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny,
head of the Sociological Institute of the University of Zurich, was the leading
scholar on migration and demography in Switzerland at that time,66 and had
developed a comprehensive social theory of international migration, publish-
ing the first sociological monograph to use the word ‘Migration’ in German
in the title.67 Drawing on post-war international expert debates, Hoffmann-
Nowotny argued that migration was an inevitable social exchange process
within the hierarchical international system based on the unequal economic
development of ‘world society’.68 In 1985, a working group of the Swiss Society
for Statistics and Macroeconomics – scholars as well as practitioners in public
administration – published an edited volume that proposed a new intellectual
foundation for a comprehensive population policy for the Swiss state.69 Haug,
who completed his dissertation that year and was still working at the Swiss
64 Haug, ‘Und es kamen Menschen’.
65 Haug supported the cause on several occasions, including as a guest speaker on migration
and xenophobia at the Mitenand-Forum 85 in Zurich in October 1985, see its program in:
sfa, J2.257#2013/1#1126*.
66 On immigration as a solution to an ageing population, see for example: Hans-Joachim
Hoffmann-Nowotny, Die Zukunft des Fremdarbeiterproblems (Zurich 1974) 14.
67 Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny, Migration: Ein Beitrag zu einer soziologischen Erk-
lärung (Stuttgart 1970).
68 On Hoffmann-Nowotny and his impact on migration research, see Espahangizi, ‘The
“sociologic” of postmigration’.
69 Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkswirtschaft und Statistik sgvs (Kommission Bev-
ölkerungspolitik), Sterben die Schweizer aus? die Bevölkerung der Schweiz: Probleme –
Perspektiven – Politik (Bern 1985).
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
400 Espahangizi and Mähr
Red Cross, took part in the working group which was chaired by Hermann-
Michel Hagman, another leading migration scholar and sociologically inclined
demographer.70 Hagmann had been a student of Albert Sauvy, a renowned
French demographer who had coined the term ‘Third World’ as well as the slo-
gan ‘growth or ageing’.71 Moving within this intellectual world, Haug brought
this new mindset, which had been gaining ground in Swiss humanitarian as
well as academic contexts more generally, with him when he entered the fso
in 1986.
3.4 Towards a New Comprehensive Migration Policy in the Late 1980s
and Early 1990s
Werner Haug’s work at the fso shows that the new mode of migration statis-
tics that materialised in the 1987 population scenario must be understood in a
broader historical context as the outcome of various developments within
Swiss society and on a global scale. International Organisations like the UN,
ilo, and oecd, humanitarian and refugee aid organisations as well as social
scientists had all taken note of the tectonic shifts in global population move-
ments beginning in the second half of the 1970s. Swiss officials and scholars
came into contact with concepts like ‘migration’ that had become more cur-
rent in these international contexts.72 In the Swiss public administration, how-
ever, the comprehensive concept of ‘migration’ did not take root until the late
1980s and early 1990s,73 at a moment when the Swiss state was struggling to
adapt to the challenges of governance in a changing world order, on a global
level but also in the context of European integration. The number of asylum
seekers had increased significantly in the 1980s and traditional distinctions,
such as between labour market policies and asylum law, as well as the material
infrastructure they were based on, were proving more and more inadequate.
These problems were, of course, also a consequence of a lack of political will to
provide necessary means for dealing with new migratory movements, even
more so under the pressure of a heated public debate and the long shadow of
70 Interview with Hermann-Michel Hagmann on 5 December 2018 in Sion by Kijan Espah-
angizi. See also Hermann-Michel Hagmann, Les travailleurs étrangers, chance et tourment
de la Suisse, problème économique, social, politique (Lausanne 1966).
71 sgvs, Sterben die Schweizer aus, 163.
72 In international refugee aid contexts like the unhcr, the concept of migration was con-
tested until the 1990s, due to the special legal status of refugees compared to other forms
of migrant. See Caroline Moorehead, Human cargo. A journey among refugees (New York
2005) 349–351.
73 Espahangizi, ‘“Migration” – Ein neues Konzept zwischen Politik und Wissenschaft’.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 401
fears of ‘overforeignisation’.74 In the second half of the 1980s, the Swiss govern-
ment came to realise that they were not dealing with a temporary shift in
migratory patterns but a permanent one. International exchange and coordi-
nation in this area turned out to be vital – on the level of statistical data, but
also with regard to concepts and terminology such as ‘migration’. Changes in
the political and economic world order in the course of a new wave of globali-
sation had not only triggered new global migratory dynamics, but also in-
creased the need for informed and effective governance. Especially in the early
1980s, new processes of rationalisation, computerisation and changing data
and knowledge policies within the public administration were meant to en-
sure that the Swiss state would be able to meet the challenges of an informa-
tion-based global economy. The fso’s population scenarios crystallised the
intersection of these interlinked developments, while other branches of the
public administration drew on this new mode of migration statistics to initiate
political processes that would transform the way migratory movements were
perceived and governed by the state. Similar to the story of the fso, it took a
staff change in 1986 to set things in motion.
In 1986, the experienced humanitarian aid expert and liberal politician
Peter Arbenz became the first delegate for refugees at the Federal Department
of Justice and Police.75 His task was to reorganise asylum policies and to build
a new infrastructure and coordination system capable of dealing with the ris-
ing number of asylum requests. Among the many practical measures, he over-
saw the consolidation of auper, an automated register for asylum seekers that
stored personalised data on individual cases and their application processes.
Moreover, Arbenz headed an interdepartmental strategy group initiated in
1987 to develop a new policy framework for dealing with the increasingly ur-
gent ‘refugee problem’. Already through his previous work as the director of
Helvetas, the leading private humanitarian and development aid organisation
in Switzerland, Arbenz was well aware of both the global dimension of the is-
sue and the need for new approaches. Werner Haug – who shared this perspec-
tive – was invited by Arbenz to cooperate with the strategy group as represen-
tative of the fso. The 1987 scenario analysis provided the necessary statistical
data for the strategy group, and also offered an underlying narrative and con-
ceptual framework for what was subsequently coined a new ‘comprehensive
74 Jonathan Pärli, ‘Who is (il)legal now? The Swiss refugee solidarity movement and the
polemic about the law 1973–1992’, Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie 39:2 (2019) 177–203.
75 Interview with Peter Arbenz on 24 July 2019 in Winterthur by Kijan Espahangizi.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
402 Espahangizi and Mähr
migration policy’.76 Arbenz envisioned a holistic approach towards ‘migration’
that encompassed international labour market policy, asylum law, immigrant
integration, international refugee aid, and developmental aid as well as foreign
policy, and was compatible with the various international forums for migration
governance developing on a global and a European level.77 The strategy group’s
final report from 1989 triggered a heavily contested political process that in-
volved various branches of the federal administration, the parliament, civil
society organisations and the broader public, and would ultimately shift the
field toward a more integrated and globalised perspective on migration policy
during the 1990s.78
The new mode of migration statistics developed in the 1980s at the fso in
the form of population scenarios and the related electronic data processing
infrastructure shaped the perception of the Swiss state authorities with regard
to the global ‘age of migration’– the contours of which became even more ap-
parent with the global population movements that followed the fall of com-
munism in 1989. At the same time, the emerging integrated perspective on
migration also shaped the data infrastructures of the federal administration. In
1991, the Swiss government created a permanent interdepartmental working
group on migration issues to facilitate the exchange of data and information
between the different state authorities.79 In 1993, auper (the automated regis-
ter for asylum seekers) was integrated into the car, which had initially been
constructed within the parameters of the guest worker era. This merger laid
the groundwork for the integrated Central Migration Information System
(cemis) mentioned in the introduction, which was only introduced and inte-
grated into the infrastructure of the European asylum and refugee system
(Schengen/Dublin) after long political negotiations on a new Swiss migration
law in the 2000s.80
76 Strategie für eine Flüchtlings- und Asylpolitik der 90er Jahre (Bern 1989) 10.
77 Christina Oelgemöller, The evolution of migration management in the global north
(London 2017).
78 Bericht über Konzeption und Prioritäten der schweizerischen Ausländerpolitik der Neun-
ziger Jahre (Bern 1991), ‘Bericht des Bundesrates zur Ausländer- und Flüchtlingspolitik
vom 15. Mai 1991 (91.036)’, Bundesblatt 3:27 (1991) 291–323; Peter Arbenz, Bericht über eine
schweizerische Migrationspolitik (Bern 1995); Expertenkommission Migration, Ein neues
Konzept der Migrationspolitik (Bern 1997).
79 Interdepartementale Arbeitsgruppe für Wanderungsfragen, Band 1, 1991–1994, in: sfa
E4280A#2017/359#691*.
80 ‘Verordnung über das Zentrale Ausländerregister (zar-Verordnung)’, Amtliche Sam-
mlung des Bundesrechts 26 (6 July 1993) 2011–2022.‘Verordnung über die eidgenössische
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
The Making of a Swiss Migration Regime 403
4 Conclusion
Infrastructural knowledge is a Wittgensteinian ‘form of life’ […] In this
sense, infrastructures constitute society. […] Thus, infrastructure is
the invisible background, the substrate or support, the technocultural/
natural environment, of modernity.81
Following the historian of technology Paul N. Edwards, one could argue that
writing the history of migration data infrastructures in the second half of the
twentieth century allows us to reconstruct the genealogy of societies for whom
regulating, struggling or even ‘obsessing’ over migration has turned into a form
of life, or to put it more sociologically, into a vital mode of socialisation –
‘Vergesellschaftung’.82
One side of the story is that data infrastructures like the Swiss Central Aliens
Register and the demographic apparatus of the Federal Statistical Office pro-
vide the means to capture, process, understand and act upon social realities of
human mobility. Seen from this view, they are socio-technical support systems
that produce data and knowledge for governance. The rather hasty introduc-
tion of the car and its legalistic quota logic nonetheless reveal to what extent
the centralised computerised infrastructure resisted the empirical reality of
labour allocation driven by business cycles, social, and political developments.
In the 1970s, the idea of complete cybernetic control over foreign worker em-
ployment gave way to a more variable use of this data tool for passive control
and the subjectivation of a part of the population in Switzerland which contin-
ues today. In the 1980s, the Swiss state developed new statistical tools and elec-
tronic databases, building on the existing infrastructures, to meet the chal-
lenges and uncertainties of a changing world order in times of globalisation.
The fso’s population scenarios placed Swiss demography in a new global mi-
gration framework which played a constitutive role in forming, in the public
administration, an integrated sociological perspective on different forms of
mobility, under the new umbrella term of migration. They provided the statis-
tical groundwork for the discussion on a ‘comprehensive migration policy’ in
Statistik des jährlichen Bevölkerungsstandes’, Sammlung der eidgenössischen Gesetze 46
(18 November 1980), 1699–1670.
81 Edwards, ‘Infrastructure and modernity’, 190–191.
82 Kijan Espahangizi, ‘Ab wann sind Gesellschaften postmigrantisch? Wissenshistorische
Überlegungen ausgehend von der Schweiz’, in: Juliane Karakayali, Naika Foroutan and
Riem Spielhaus (ed.), Postmigrantische Perspektiven: Ordnungssysteme, Repräsentationen,
Kritik (Frankfurt am Main 2018) 35–55, 49.
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404
404 Espahangizi and Mähr
the 1990s and the subsequent convergence of the first integrated Swiss migra-
tion regime.
Seen from this perspective, the other side of Edwards’s characterisation of
infrastructures comes into play. The electronic data infrastructures and statis-
tical tools that emerged between the 1960s and 1980s in Switzerland were not
only support systems. They provided a material substrate in which the very
idea of an integrated Swiss migration regime, understood as an regulatory ma-
chine or ‘apparatus’ for governing various different forms of human mobility,
could take form by the 1990s.83 Hence, one can also conclude that these elec-
tronic data infrastructures and statistical tools served as material intermediar-
ies or transmission belts through which the changing social realities of human
mobility after the Second World War and the global recession of the 1970s act-
ed upon, reshaped and transformed the Swiss state and Swiss society. In order
to follow the traces of this two-sided process – regulating migration and shap-
ing society – into the present, the next step would be to take a closer look at the
continued development of the Swiss migration regime and its computerised
data infrastructures in response to accelerating globalisation and Europeanisa-
tion since the 1990s.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Jakob Tanner, Jonathan Pärli, Gleb Albert, Werner Haug
and Julia Sittmann as well as the anonymous reviewers for their critical
remarks.
83 Gregory Feldman, The migration apparatus. Security, labor, and policymaking in the Euro-
pean Union (Stanford, CA 2012).
journal of migration history 6 (2020) 379-404