Work

It’s because of the cross-border commuters: opposing the free movement of persons in the Swiss borderlands with the European Union

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Scholarly work on populism and borders have largely followed separate paths so far. This article aims at bringing together these two strands by means of an empirical analysis of individual attitudes on a re-bordering policy in the context of a national-populist mobilization against the free movement of persons. Recent contributions on border regions in affluent countries have highlighted an increased opposition to European integration that is fueled by political actors from the populist radical right. We hypothesize that border residents are more opposed to the free movement of persons than non-border residents the more they are exposed to the influx of cross-border workers. The empirical analysis draws on a representative post-vote survey from the so-called “VOTO studies” on a popular initiative by the radical right that demanded Switzerland’s termination of the free movement of persons with the European Union in 2020. In line with our hypothesis, we find a significant positive interaction effect between border residence and the share of cross-border commuters on the likelihood to vote in favor of this proposition. While border residence turns out to be insufficient to foster increased re-bordering attitudes, we show that the magnitude of incoming cross-border commuters makes a difference.

Source: Frontiers in Political Science

DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2024.1360265

Authors: Laurent Bernhard, Lukas Lauener

Institutions: University of Zurich, FORS – Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences, University of Lausanne

Language: English

Topic: Populism, Right-Wing Movements

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,285

Funder: Université de Lausanne