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