“There are winners and losers of immigration”

How attractive is Switzerland as a country of immigration?
Switzerland is very attractive for workers because of its high wages and good quality of life. It has become a country of immigration since the end of the Second World War. Switzerland had fewer than five million inhabitants in 1945. Today it has 8.8 million. The Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) reckons that the country’s population could, for the first time, exceed 10 million by 2040.

Is there a point at which Switzerland has to say ‘stop’ and cannot take in any more immigrants?
Switzerland could easily provide a good livelihood for more inhabitants than it does today. Some other European countries of comparable size and similar living standards have larger populations. This can, of course, create political challenges – such as spatial planning – and distribution conflicts.

What sort of approach do you need to adopt in order to tackle these challenges?
I think that, from an economic policy perspective, Switzerland faces the challenge of how to take advantage of the opportunity of being an extremely attractive business location in the middle of Europe that can provide a livelihood for many people and thus create value. This probably also requires an openness to immigrants who possess skills and new ideas that are in high demand. On the other hand, there is the question of how to maintain, potentially reshape and further expand the quality of life, culture and social cohesion that also make Switzerland attractive and competitive.

Do immigrants possess the right qualifications to benefit the Swiss economy?
Yes, you could say that. Immigrants in Switzerland are often better qualified than the native workers. In some regions, such as Zurich and Zug, the proportion of tertiary-qualified people among new immigrants is an impressive 75 per cent. We have investigated this phenomenon empirically in a study. Immigration in this country is strongly demand-driven. Even those who are objectively low-skilled often fill gaps in the local labour market. It is often difficult, for example, to attract enough Swiss nationals to do strenuous jobs in construction, services and waste disposal. This explains why the profiles of immigrants fit so well with the needs of the Swiss economy.

Does this also apply to people with a refugee background?The qualification structure of refugees is different. They primarily come not to work but because there is a war in their home country or they might be persecuted, for example. Many refugees have a hard time getting a foothold in the labour market in Switzerland.

What are the biggest obstacles facing refugees trying to find work?
In addition to the language barrier there are many legal restrictions on finding work, which we have examined in more detail in a external pagestudycall_made. Refugees had to wait for months or even longer after their arrival over the time horizon studied (from 1999 to 2016) before they were allowed to work at all. In certain cantons they were even then only allowed to work in certain sectors such as agriculture, construction and hospitality. And firms often had to give priority to hiring locals. This weakens the employment prospects of people with a refugee background. To be fair, I would like to point out that many of these restrictions have now been lifted completely – at least for temporarily admitted individuals. However, they still apply to asylum seekers, a considerable number of whom remain in Switzerland.

Are there any further barriers beyond the socio-political dimension?
In addition to legal hurdles, health-related obstacles could also play a major role in the low labour market participation rate of people with a refugee background. Many of them have had traumatic experiences in their country of origin or during their escape, which can continue to affect their mental and physical health here in Switzerland. Furthermore, studies show that access to proper treatment for illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder for people with a refugee background is inadequate in Switzerland for various reasons. We are working on a large-scale study in collaboration with University Hospital Zurich and the Immigration Lab at ETH to investigate whether a broadly scalable psychological treatment method could provide initial relief for stressed individuals and improve their integration.

Are there any countries where refugees are integrated more successfully into the labour market?
This question is not so easy to answer because different groups of refugees seek protection in different destination countries, and some destination countries only grant asylum very selectively. If one simply looks – as in a external pagerecent studycall_made – at the employment rates of refugees each year after arrival in various destination countries and compares them, for example, with native workers or other immigrants, then the United States and Canada, for example, do relatively well: the employment rates there are over 60 per cent ten years after entry, while the employment rates in some European countries are much lower. As I said, however, these countries receive very different kinds of asylum seekers, which is why this is not really a fair comparison.

Will migration to Europe and Switzerland increase over the coming decades?
Yes. Demographic change alone is creating huge demand for labour in northern and central Europe in particular, which is unlikely to be alleviated without immigration from abroad. In addition, other factors such as climate change and geopolitical conflicts are likely to boost migration.