Historical Shifts in Asylum Policies in Switzerland: Between Humanitarian Values and the Protection of National Identity

Author(s) : Yvonne Riaño, Doris Wastl–Walter

Source : https://zenodo.org/record/5035613

“As in many other European countries, the issue of asylum seeking has become in Switzerland a central issue of public debate, and immigration and refugee policies have become a top political priority. Pressure to make asylum policies more restrictive has increasingly come from right-wing populist parties that have become stronger over the past decade. This paper examines the shifts in policies and state discourses of refugees in Switzerland from the end of the 19th century up to today. The study is based on the perspective of critical discourse analysis, “an approach that specifically focuses on the role of discourse in the reproduction of power, dominance and inequality” (van Dijk, 2004: 20). The practical study of state discourse focuses on three dimensions of analysis: the discourse itself, the context of discourse, and the historical events surrounding the discourse. The paper shows that the evolution of state representations of refugees in Switzerland has evolved from a predominantly humanitarian attitude towards asylum-seekers before the First World War to a mainly defensive attitude, which partly persists today, where asylum-seekers are increasingly perceived as a cultural threat and a financial burden. It demonstrates that imaginations of race, class and political systems have been main factors in structuring shifting state representations of refugees.”