It may not be fears of losing jobs, unemployment or having their culture diluted that is making European voters choose anti-immigrant parties. It is just the right kind of communication, according to a new study.
Researchers from ETH Zurich and Bocconi University in Milan recently studied all Swiss municipalities and cities that are less than a 30-minute drive from the country’s border. They focused on the period before and after 2004, when Switzerland first fully opened its borders to European Union citizens as part of the introduction of the free movement of people.
As part of the study, voter turnout was compared in two areas: communities and cities near the border (0 to 15 minutes by car from the border) and those 15 to 30 minutes by car from the border, which served as a control group.
The study authors did this as the proportion of foreigners increased much more near the border after it was opened, than in the control group.
The data showed that the proportion of voters who voted in national elections for anti-immigration parties such as the SVP, Lega dei Ticinesi and Mouvement citoyens genevois increased by a full six percentage points more in the border communities than in the communities that were 15 to 30 minutes away by car. This happened after the introduction of the free movement of people.
The researchers set about finding reasons for this. There had to be alternative explanations since both, the border communities and those further inland had comparable political and economic conditions before the border was opened in 2004.
They found that cultural factors were not responsible as those foreigners who had come into the border areas shared language and culture with the local population
“Economic fears also do not seem to play a role: The study found no evidence that the influx of foreign workers has had a negative impact on average wages or employment in communities near the border. On the contrary: wages have even improved slightly,” according to a statement by ETH Zurich.
So, what was the reason for the voters in Switzerland’s border areas voting for anti-immigrant parties? It was the right kind of messaging, the researchers found.
The anti-immigrant parties, particularly the SVP, was found by the researchers to be using a new narrative around the term ‘density stress’ from 2004 onwards to address the negative effects of immigration.
According to this narrative, immigration caused overcrowded public transport, congested roads and urban sprawl.
“The density stress narrative caught on with broader sections of the population because it expressed unease about immigration without using xenophobic terms,” the statement quoted Dominik Hangartner, ETH professor of political analysis and one of the authors of the study.
It was this type of communication that contributed to the success of the anti-immigration parties in the border regions.
The study authors also found that parties critical of migration were particularly active in the border communities after the border was opened — significantly more active than in the communities that are 15 to 30 minutes away from the border.
Moreover, parliamentarians from the SVP and Lega who came from the border communities submitted significantly more migration-critical motions to the cantonal parliament than their party colleagues from the more distant communities. These motions often explicitly referred to the density stress narrative.
Those in the border regions who were moderately interested in politics were the most open to the arguments of the anti-immigration parties, according to survey data.
Taken together, these findings suggest that anti-immigration parties focused on the border communities with their density stress rhetoric and thus convinced people who were neither too interested in politics nor not interested at all, the statement noted.
“Anti-immigration parties in the border region not only reacted to the problems of the population, they also aroused and reinforced these fears through their rhetoric. They shape the public discourse and seem to benefit from the topic of immigration even when immigration has no measurable, negative effects for most people,” said Andreas Beerli, economist at the ETH’s Economic Research Institute and one of the co-authors.