Abstract
This article examines two social categories brought into being by recent migration policies in Switzerland: the expatriate (or “expat”) and the migrant. Treating these categories as relationally constituted, the article explores how this distinction was constructed and managed in response to processes of European harmonization in the 1990s, employing shifting discourses of difference: while Switzerland’s Three Circle immigration model differentiated immigrants along lines of “cultural distance” vis-à-vis Switzerland, Swiss participation in the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons contrasted these groups according to a new discourse of “skills.” Focusing on this discursive transition, the article argues that the expatriate-migrant distinction constructs differently valued immigrants whose contrasting relationship to the nation and “integration” is enacted in legal and social expectations surrounding language use. The article argues for critical attention to how “brain gain” and skills discourses enable, and extend border-maintaining discourses of “culture.”
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the research support of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
References
Adly, Hossam. 2011. Whose housing crisis? Transnational elites’ residential strategies in Geneva and the role of public policies. Workshop paper presented at the 23rd Conference of the European Network for Housing Research, Toulouse, France, 5–8 July.Search in Google Scholar
Adly, Hossam. 2013. Fonctionnaires internationaux à Genève: le poids du privilège. Espaces et societies 3(154). 71–85.10.3917/esp.154.0071Search in Google Scholar
Auslander, Leora. 2000. Bavarian Crucifixes and French headscarves: Religious signs and the postmodern European state. Cultural Dynamics 12(3). 183–209.10.1177/092137400001200302Search in Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981 [1937–8]. Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel. In Michael Holquist (ed.), The dialogic imagination: Four essays, 84–258. Austin: University of Texas Press.Search in Google Scholar
Baumann, Zygmunt. 1995. Making and unmaking of strangers. Thesis Eleven 43(1). 1–16.10.5040/9781350219496.ch-003Search in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2009. Language, asylum, and the national order. Current Anthropology 50(4). 415–441.10.1086/600131Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 2006. Regulating aversion: Tolerance in the age of identity and empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400827473Search in Google Scholar
Büchi, Christopher. 2013. Schweizerdeutsch, Kult und Kulturschock. Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Tuesday 12 February. http://romandie.blog.nzz.ch/2013/02/12/schweizerdeutsch-kult-und-kulturschock/ (accessed 21 April 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Bureau de l’intégration des étrangers [Foreigner Integration Bureau]. 2013. Programme d’intégration cantonale du Canton de Genève: Années 2014–2017. Geneva: Foreigner Integration Bureau.Search in Google Scholar
Caloz-Tschopp, Marie-Claire. 2000. Ce qui fait … Ceux qui font le lit du totalitarisme néolibéral à venir? Revue québécoise de droit international 13(2). 71–97.Search in Google Scholar
Caloz-Tschopp, Marie-Claire. 2004. Parole, Pensée, Violence dans l’état: une demarche de recherche. Paris: L’Harmattan.Search in Google Scholar
Carr, E. Summerson. 2011. Scripting addiction: The politics of therapeutic talk and American sobriety. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400836659Search in Google Scholar
Cattacin, Sandro, Milena Chimienti, Thomas Kessler, Minh-Son Nguyen & Isabelle Renschler. 2007. Évaluation de la Loi sur l’intégration des étrangers du Canton de Genève. Geneva: University of Geneva.Search in Google Scholar
Centlivres, Pierre, Micheline Centlivres-Demont, Nadja Maillard & Laurence Ossipow. 1991. Une Seconde Nature: Pluralisme, naturalization et identité en Suisse romande et au Tessin. Lausanne: Editions L’Age d’Homme.Search in Google Scholar
Chu, Julie. 2010. Cosmologies of credit: Transnational mobility and the politics of destination in China. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.10.1515/9780822393160Search in Google Scholar
Conférence tripartite sur les Agglomerations. 2009. Avenir de la politique suisse d’intégration des étrangers. Berne: Conférence des gouvernements cantonaux.Search in Google Scholar
Council of Europe. 2011. City of Geneva intercultural profile. https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/culture/Cities/Geneva-InterProfile_en.pdf (accessed 7 July 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Cruikshank, Barbara. 1999. The will to empower: Democratic citizens and other subjects. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.10.7591/9781501733918Search in Google Scholar
D’Amato, Gianni. 2010. Switzerland: a multicultural country without multicultural policies? In Steven Vertovec & Susanne Wessendorf (eds.), The multiculturalism backlash: European discourses, policies, and practices, 130–151. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Duchêne, Alexandre. 2008. Ideologies across nations: The construction of linguistic minorities at the United Nations. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110208313Search in Google Scholar
Duchêne, Alexandre & Monica Heller (eds.). 2012. Language in late capitalism: Pride and profit. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203155868Search in Google Scholar
Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. 2013. European nationals in Switzerland: Information on the free movement of persons. Bern: Directorate for European Affairs.Search in Google Scholar
Federal Office for Migration (FOM). 2006. Problèmes d’intégration des ressortissants étrangers en Suisse: identification des faits, des causes, des groupes à risque, des mesures existantes ainsi que des mesures à prendre en matière de politique d’intégration. Bern: Federal Office for Migration.Search in Google Scholar
Federal Office for Migration (FOM). 2008. Foreign nationals and asylum seekers in Switzerland. Bern: Federal Office for Migration.Search in Google Scholar
Feldman, Gregory. 2012. The migration apparatus: Security, labor, and policymaking in the European Union. Stanford: Stanford University Press.10.1515/9780804779128Search in Google Scholar
Fikes, Kesha. 2009. Managing African Portugal: The citizen-migrant distinction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.10.2307/j.ctv123x6ndSearch in Google Scholar
Flubacher, Mi-Cha. 2013. Language(s) as the key to integration? The ideological role of diglossia in the German-speaking region of Switzerland. In Erzsébet Barát, Patrick Studer & Jiří Nekvapil (eds.), Ideological conceptions of language: Discourses of linguistic diversity, 171–192. Frankurt am Main: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar
Flubacher, Mi-Cha. 2014. Integration durch Sprache – die Sprache der Integration: Ein kritische Diskursanalyze zur Rolle der Sprache in der Schweizer und Basler Integrationspolitik. Göttingen: Vienna University Press.10.14220/9783737002035Search in Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 2006. Contradictions of standard language in Europe: Implications for the study of practices and publics. Social Anthropology 14(2). 163–181.10.1111/j.1469-8676.2006.tb00032.xSearch in Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 2012. Sociolinguistic regimes and the management of “Diversity.” In Alexandre Duchêne & Monica Heller (eds.), Language in late capitalism: Pride and profit, 22–42. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
Giordano, Cristiana. 2014. Migrants in translation: Caring and the logics of difference in contemporary Italy. Oakland: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520958869Search in Google Scholar
Green, Nancy L. 2009. Expatriation, expatriates, and expats: The American transformation of a concept. American Historical Review 114(2). 307–328.10.1086/ahr.114.2.307Search in Google Scholar
Holmes, Douglas. 2000. Integral Europe: Fast-capitalism, multiculturalism, neofascism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. 1989. When talk isn’t cheap: Language and political economy. American Ethnologist 16(2). 248–267.10.4324/9780429496288-17Search in Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. & Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, 35–84. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lambek, Michael. 2007. The cares of Alice Alder: Recuperating kinship and history in Switzerland. In Janet Carsten (ed.), Ghosts of memory: Essays on remembrance and relatedness, 218–240. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.10.1002/9780470692301.ch10Search in Google Scholar
Leinonen, Johanna. 2012. Invisible immigrants, visible expats? Americans in Finnish discourses on immigration and internationalization. Nordic Journal of Migration Research 2(3). 213–223.10.2478/v10202-011-0043-8Search in Google Scholar
Lüdi, Georges. 2008. Der schweizer Sprachen-Cocktail neu gemixt!: Sprache als Brücke und Barriere. In Daniel Müller-Jentsch (ed.), Die Neue Zuwanderung: Die Schweiz zwischen Brain-Gain und Überfremdungsangst, 185–203. Zürich: Avenir Suisse/Neue Zürcher Zeitung.Search in Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 2003. Buddha is hiding: Refugees, citizenship, the new America. Oakland: University of California Press.10.1525/california/9780520229983.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Piller, Ingrid & Loy Lising. 2014. Language, employment, and settlement: Temporary meat workers in Australia. Multilingua: Journal of Cross-cultural and Interlanguage communication 33(1–2). 35–59.Search in Google Scholar
Pochon-Berger, Evelyne & Peter Lenz. 2014. Language requirements and language testing for immigration and integration purposes: A synthesis of academic literature. Fribourg: Institute of Multilingualism.Search in Google Scholar
Polson, Erika. 2015. A gateway to the global city: Mobile place-making practices by expats. New Media & Society 17(4). 629–645.10.1177/1461444813510135Search in Google Scholar
Riaño, Yvonne. 2003. Migration of Skilled Latin American women to Switzerland and their struggle for Integration. In Mutsuo Yamada (ed.), Emigración Latinoamericana: Comparación Interregional entre América del Norte, Europa y Japón (JCAS Symposium Series n.19), 313–344. Osaka: The Japan Center for Area Studies.Search in Google Scholar
Riaño, Yvonne & Doris Wastl-Walter. 2006. Immigration policies, state discourses on foreigners, and the politics of identity in Switzerland. Environment and Planning 38(9). 1693–1713.10.1068/a37411Search in Google Scholar
Schwarzenbach, James. 1974. Die Überfremdung der Schweiz – wie ich sie sehe. Zurich: Verlag der Republikaner.Search in Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1996. Monoglot standard in America: Standardization and metaphors of linguistic hegemony. In Donald Brenneis & Ronald Macaulay (eds.), The matrix of language, 284–306. Boulder: Westview.10.4324/9780429496288-18Search in Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2000. Whorfianism and the linguistic imagination of nationality. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, 85–138. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Search in Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg. 1971 [1908]. The stranger. In Donald N. Levine (ed.), Georg Simmel on individuality and social forms, 143–149. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226924694.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Stolcke, Verena. 1995. Talking culture: New boundaries, new rhetorics of exclusion in Europe. Current Anthropology 36(1). 1–24.10.4337/9781781951477.00010Search in Google Scholar
Swiss Federal Council. 1991. Rapport du conseil fédéral sur la politique à l’égard des étrangers et des refugiés du 15 mai 1991. Bern: Swiss Federal Council (no. 91.036).Search in Google Scholar
Swissinfo. 2006. Federal Commission against Racism. 18 September 2006. http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/federal-commission-against-racism/246898 (accessed 3 August 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Swissinfo. 2007. Integration Measures focus on Language. 22 August 2007. http://origin.swissinfo.ch/eng/integration-measures-focus-on-language/6066196 (accessed 3 August 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Ticktin, Miriam. 2006. Where ethics and politics meet: The violence of humanitarianism in France. American Ethnologist 33(1). 33–49.10.1525/ae.2006.33.1.33Search in Google Scholar
Urciuoli, Bonnie. 2008. Skills and selves in the new workplace. American Ethnologist 35(2). 211–228.10.1111/j.1548-1425.2008.00031.xSearch in Google Scholar
Van der Veer, Peter. 2006. Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, and the politics of tolerance in the Netherlands. Public Culture 18. 111–125.10.1215/08992363-18-1-111Search in Google Scholar
Vora, Neha. 2012. Free speech and civil discourse: Producing expats, locals, and migrants in the UAE English-language blogosphere. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18. 787–807.10.1111/j.1467-9655.2012.01792.xSearch in Google Scholar
Widmer, Paul. 2008. Die Schweiz als Sonderfall: Grundlagen, Geschichte, Gestaltung. Zürich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung.Search in Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2012. Language, power and identity. Language Teaching 45(2). 215–233.10.1017/S0261444811000048Search in Google Scholar
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
