Abstract
Over the last decades the world has once more experienced an upsurge in migration and the flow has changed direction (see Hatton and Williamson 2005: 205). The worldwide migrant stock rose from 75.2 million in 1965 to 174.9 million in 2000. Earlier migration flows were from countries at the center to countries in the periphery. Today the flows are in the opposite direction. This reversal of direction has turned the Western countries into countries of immigration, whether they want it or not. This has important consequences for the host countries in many ways and has become an important political issue in these countries.
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- 1.
Switzerland, like Denmark, does not automatically grant citizenship to children born on Swiss (Danish) soil. In both countries the jus sanguinis is applied, meaning that it is the citizenship of the parents rather than the place of birth that determines a child’s citizenship.
- 2.
Furthermore a distinction is drawn between immigrants who are born abroad to non-Danish parents and descendants who are born in Denmark to non-Danish parents. International organizations, like the OECD, often define an immigrant as a foreign-born, regardless of nationality. This definition is broadly comparable to the Danish definition of an immigrant, but it deviates in some respects from the concepts used in the Swiss statistics.
- 3.
Not all Swiss seem to consider Swiss German to be the same language as German, cf. Lüdi (2008: 203).
- 4.
It is about 40 % of those born abroad and 14 % of the descendants. The group of descendants is dominated by Turks (19.1 %), Palestinians (from Lebanon) (9.0 %), Pakistanis (7.0 %), Iraqis (6.2 %), and Somalis (5.2 %).
- 5.
Some language barriers exist even for Norwegians and Swedes in Denmark. Also, it appears that many of the non-Western immigrants do not initially speak English, which is the most widespread second language in Denmark.
- 6.
Low is Sekundarstufe I = up to ISCED group 2. Middle is Sekundarstufe II = ISCED 3 and 4, while high is Tertiärstufe = ISCED groups 5 and 6.
- 7.
In 2006 60 % of the immigrants from EU15/EFTA held a university degree or its equivalent. Some indicators suggest that foreign academics just crowd out their Swiss colleagues, and hence the positive impact of high-educated immigrants on average education levels in Switzerland is reduced. Around 2000 every tenth Swiss academic lived abroad. This proportion is considerably higher than the proportion of Danish academics living abroad even though Danish academics stand to gain more from moving to countries with lower taxes. See the reports from Avenir Suisse by Müller-Jentsch (2008) and Haug and Müller-Jentsch (2008).
- 8.
The highest educational attainment level is not known for 79 % of male immigrants from Western countries, 63 % of male immigrants from non-Western countries, 69 % of female immigrants from Western countries, and 67 % of females from non-Western countries.
- 9.
The groups are: Ex-Yugoslavia, Iran, Lebanon (Palestinians), Pakistan, Poland, Somalia, Turkey, and Vietnam.
- 10.
The groups are: Ex-Yugoslavia, Lebanon (Palestinians), Pakistan, Somalia and Turkey.
- 11.
These figures could be biased downwards due to the lower age of many immigrants. Thus many might not have finished their education. However, if only immigrants aged 30 years and above are considered, the figures do not change: The average years of schooling reported by the respondents is still 10 years.
- 12.
In addition, Christensen (2010: 32–33) finds that non-Western immigrants to Denmark also tend to have lower educational attainment levels when compared to immigrants to other countries from the same country of origin.
- 13.
It does not matter if minimum wages are fixed legally or by collective wage agreements.
- 14.
For the sake of brevity, formulas and derivations are not included (see Chand and Paldam 2006). The model can be extended with externalities from immigration, but they will not be discussed at present. However, it does not consider the effects of immigration on the income distribution in the host country.
- 15.
The following draws heavily on Nannestad (2007).
- 16.
It has been a major endeavor of trade theorists to find exceptions to the two results and some have been found, but they are rather minor and will be disregarded, see e.g. Feenstra (2004).
- 17.
If immigrants are exactly like the natives with respect to their factor endowment, immigration does not affect relative factor prices, so it mainly leads to a scaling up of the size of the economy, but there might also be economies of scale and a producer surplus. This implies that economic gains from a given immigrant cohort will diminish over time as the immigrants get assimilated, i.e. become more and more like the natives.
- 18.
This argument cuts both ways. When the Swiss economy was overheating in the early 1960s, excess demand generated by foreigners (immigrants) was widely blamed for this situation (Piguet 2004: 24). As a consequence, immigration was temporarily restricted.
- 19.
Except if the Epstein-Hillman model discussed in Sect. 9.3.5 holds.
- 20.
There might still be a positive multiplier effect if the immigrants’ propensity to consume is higher than the propensity to consume of the natives, who are taxed in order to finance transfers to immigrants outside the labor market. But this effect will most likely be weak.
- 21.
- 22.
Also, the skill composition of natives and immigrants has become increasingly different since 1970.
- 23.
The analysis is conducted using a fixed-effects panel model with correction for first order autocorrelation. The time period analyzed is 2000–2009.
- 24.
There are other distributional effects as well. Thus immigration may increase land and property prices and rents, leading to redistribution to land and property owners. While property prices have indeed increased in Switzerland since 2000, Föllmi (2008: 154) finds no unambiguous correlation with increasing immigration.
- 25.
Due to the distortional effects of taxes, the Swiss model is probably the more efficient one.
- 26.
In that process it is tacitly assumed that there are neither period nor cohort effects.
- 27.
See for instance Christensen (2010: 8).
- 28.
This agrees nicely with the observation that pretax wage inequality is smaller in Switzerland than in Denmark.
- 29.
- 30.
See Havrehed (1987) for a detailed treatment of this topic. For understandable reasons it has received little attention in the Danish public.
- 31.
After protests from the public the government offered to let in 400 more. However, they were first to be admitted when 400 Hungarians from the first quota had left Denmark for other destinations.
- 32.
As the then director of the Danish Employers’ Association (DA) wrote in 1970: “If we don’t need their labor, we can just expel them” (Fisker 1970).
- 33.
Parts of the debate are surveyed in Jensen (2000).
- 34.
This was stressed several times in Fisker (1970) in no uncertain terms, for instance.
- 35.
In a private analysis a sociologist working at Statistics Denmark found in 1990 that 185 Turkish men, who lived in the Copenhagen suburb Ishøj in 1970, meanwhile had multiplied into 1,428 persons with Turkish background through family reunification and births. His results were denounced in the strongest possible terms by his superior for no other apparent reason than (lack of) political correctness.
- 36.
Since the ex-guest workers were mainly low-skilled, their families could hardly be expected to be high-skilled. In general, if chain immigration starts with low-educated immigrants, it will mainly bring low-educated people into the host country.
- 37.
On the other hand asylum seekers in Denmark have never been allowed to work. Also they have to live in special refugee camps until their cases are decided upon.
- 38.
Whether the increase in immigration to Denmark was caused by the new law on foreigners and its liberal contents, or if this increase just reflected a general upsurge in migration flows worldwide, is open to debate.
- 39.
At the time of writing the Center-Left government that has been in office since September 2011 has begun rolling back a number of these reforms. Thus both the special transfers to new immigrants, the ceiling over the total amount a person can receive in social assistance benefits, and the 350 h work requirement for couples with both spouses on social assistance benefits have been abolished. Also some of the changes in the rules for family reunification have been undone. The point system has been abolished altogether. It is expected that this will roughly double the number of family reunifications over the next year. Thus the pendulum is moving in the opposite direction once more.
- 40.
Obviously the rolling back by the present Center-Left government of reforms of immigration policies implemented by the previous Center-Right government is not an attempt to maximize the natives’ gains from immigration. The changes so far are estimated to cost the taxpayer (mostly natives) about 1 bill. DKK a year. This is an uncertain estimate, however, since the effect of easing family reunification is difficult to predict. According to the government it will increase family reunification by 1,000 persons a year at a cost of 300 mill. DKK. These estimates may easily turn out to be overly optimistic, however.
- 41.
“Swiss” and “Danes” are here defined as people born in Switzerland and Denmark, respectively. Thus a “Swiss” in Denmark could be a German who just happened to have been born in Switzerland. Likewise a “Dane” living in Switzerland could be a Somali born in Denmark. However, there are most probably just few of such cases.
- 42.
The OECD Migration Database only contains information on individuals aged 15 and above. Therefore the actual size of these two groups must be somewhat greater.
- 43.
Provided the skill distributions are similar in the two countries.
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Appendix: Cross-Flows of Immigration Between Denmark and Switzerland
Appendix: Cross-Flows of Immigration Between Denmark and Switzerland
According to the OECD Migration Database around the millennium shift there was a group of Swiss living in Denmark and a group of Danes living in Switzerland.Footnote 41 Both groups were minor: The Swiss in Denmark numbered 1,601 individuals, while the Danes in Switzerland was roughly twice that size (3,876 individuals).Footnote 42
Figure 9.9 indicates that the Danish Diaspora in Switzerland is older than the Swiss Diaspora in Denmark. Alternatively it may be more persistent. Despite this difference with respect to length of stay the percentage of Danes in Switzerland having acquired Swiss citizenship (40.4 %) is a little below the percentage of Swiss immigrants in Denmark who have become Danish citizens (42.5 %). Anyhow it is likely that in both groups at least 4 out of 10 migrants have left their country of origin for good. While the difference with respect to length of stay might be taken to indicate that Swiss migration to Denmark is more temporary than Danish migration to Switzerland, the similarity of the proportions taking up citizenship in their host country would seem to contradict this interpretation.
Length of stay for Swiss in Denmark and Danes in Switzerland (Source: OECD Migration database)
The age distributions of the two immigrant groups are quite similar, as shown in Fig. 9.10. As usual with immigrant groups Swiss immigrants in Denmark and Danish immigrants in Switzerland are on average younger than the natives. The Danes in Switzerland hold a higher proportion of individuals in the age group 40–64, but a surprisingly large proportion of the Swiss in Denmark are 70 years old, or older.
Age distribution of Swiss in Denmark and Danes in Switzerland (Source: OECD Migration database)
Table 9.4 shows that on average Danish immigrants in Switzerland are (far) better educated than Swiss immigrants in Denmark. Almost one fourth of the Danish immigrants are in the highest educational group (tertiary, level 2) whereas less than 1 % of the Swiss immigrants in Denmark are that highly educated. Even if one collapses ISCED groups 5 and 6 into one, Danish immigrants in Switzerland as a group stay ahead of Swiss immigrants in Denmark when it comes to tertiary education. It looks like Denmark is less attractive to highly educated Swiss immigrants than Switzerland is to highly educated Danes. This pattern is, of course, what one would expect from the Roy-Borjas model (Borjas 1994) since the spread of the income distribution is greater in Denmark than in Switzerland.Footnote 43
Table 9.5 shows the extent of economic activity in both immigrant groups. About two thirds of the Swiss immigrants in Denmark and of the Danish immigrants in Switzerland are economically active. Nevertheless labor market participation rates for Swiss immigrants in Denmark are lower than for the natives, as are labor market participation rates for Danes in Switzerland. On the other hand, labor market participation rates of the Swiss in Denmark are above those for all immigrants combined. Labor market participation rates for Danes in Switzerland are lower than those of all immigrant groups combined. What this reflects is that immigrants in Denmark – and especially non-western immigrants – have low labor market participation rates.
Thus close to 70 % of the Danes in Switzerland aged 15+ are there to work. Obviously the popular idea of only rich Danish rentiers and retirees going to Switzerland to enjoy their wealth in a safe haven needs some revision.
Table 9.6 shows that this is not a likely explanation. Swiss women in Denmark are about as economically active as are Danish women in Switzerland. Most probably the relatively low economic participation rates in both groups reflect the status of “accompanying (non-working) wives” of a sizeable proportion of Swiss women in Denmark and Danish women in Switzerland.
Table 9.6 also shows a considerable difference between the proportion of Danish males in Switzerland that is economically active, and the proportion of economically active Swiss males in Denmark. Part of this difference can most likely be explained by differences in the age structures of the two groups: The proportion of individuals in the youngest and oldest age groups among the Swiss in Denmark exceeds the corresponding proportion among Danes in Switzerland, cf. Fig. 9.10.
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Christoffersen, H., Beyeler, M., Eichenberger, R., Nannestad, P., Paldam, M. (2014). Immigration. In: The Good Society. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37238-4_9
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