Organisational Solidarity in Switzerland Across Fields: Interlinkage Between Immigration and (Un)employment

Abstract

This chapter is devoted to an in-depth analysis of qualitative interviews about practices of solidarity in Switzerland among the fields of (un)employment and immigration. The chapter shows how institutional arrangements (policy frameworks) shape organisational solidarity within and across these two fields. The history of immigration in Switzerland goes hand in hand with the development of labour policies. This entrenchment is reflected in the activities held by the transnational solidarity organisations (TSOs) and the type of beneficiaries they support. The current research assesses TSOs’ solidarity practices while focusing on their networks of cooperation. Findings reveal that although “immigrants” and “workers” are not mutually exclusive groups, there is an implicit boundary between (un)employment and immigration associations. This translates into an organisational gap where people in situations of multiple sources of vulnerability lack full organisational support (e.g., precarious immigrant workers).

Introduction

Results presented in this chapter have been obtained from the TransSOL project (“European paths to transnational solidarity at times of crisis: Conditions, forms, role models and policy responses”). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 649435 and from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation under grant agreement No. 15.0191.

Solidarity as a practice is a response to help overcome immediate needs. In this chapter, we discuss how organisational responses of solidarity practices are strongly shaped by contextual factors. To do so, we provide an in-depth and qualitative analysis of practices of solidarity in Switzerland among the fields of (un)employment and immigration. These solidarity practices are analysed at the organisational level, as civil society responses to societal challenges. They are at the foundations of social processes that go beyond an infrastructure for the provision of services and goods (Coleman 1976; Scott 2003).

Our analysis is built at the crossroads of solidarity movement studies and organisational studies. Scholars have indicated at least three major mechanisms that commonly operate in social movement and organisational studies to analyse organisations (McAdam et al. 2001): environmental factors affecting the agency of collective actors; cognitive factors concerning actors’ perceptions, interests and strategies; and relational factors of networks between collective actors. Both of these strands of literature have largely discussed approaches to collective actors as rational organisational forms shaped by political and cultural factors (Kriesi 1996; Davis et al. 2006). Yet, academic writing has overlooked how institutional factors—“the rules of the game”—shape solidarity practices across fields, within interdependent domestic domains.

Our chapter shows how institutional arrangements shape organisational solidarity across the fields of (un)employment and immigration in Switzerland. Key to our analysis is the assumption that Swiss organisational solidarity in the fields of (un)employment and immigration are partly conditioned and interrelated by common policy regimes related to immigrants’ legal permits and precarious workers’ status. We argue that the historical evolution of Swiss labour market policies and the enriched complexity of immigrants’ profiles have been translated into policy frameworks that mutually shape collective actors’ agency across the two fields. This particular entrenchment is effectively reflected in the interviews conducted for this study with actors from immigration and (un)employment associations. Although each field has a specific target group—immigrants versus workers or unemployed people—these categories are not mutually exclusive and mix easily. In a country of immigration like Switzerland, where a quarter of the active working population has an immigration background (Bundesamt für Statistik 2018a) and more than 17% of Swiss nationals hold dual citizenship (Bundesamt für Statistik 2018b), strict categories are de facto blurred. Consequently, by focusing on associations which benefit immigrants, precarious workers and unemployed people, we are interested in understanding when associations act in solidarity as enclosed fields, when they overlap and engage in solidarity across fields, but also when their action is missing.

Civic Engagement and Organised Solidarity in Switzerland: Previous Research

Since Tocqueville, the role of associations within democracy has been thought to enhance horizontal relationships of trust and to counterbalance institutional power (Putnam 2000; Verba et al. 1995). Complementary to this perspective, we believe organisations are more than mediators between political institutions and citizens. They are drivers of social change, pressure, representation and welfare subsidiarity (Baglioni and Giugni 2014; Warren 2000; Laumann and Knoke 1987). In particular, the set of actors in whom we are interested, the transnational solidarity organisations (TSOs),¹ maintain an active role in the provision of services, support and advocacy in favour of vulnerable groups (Kousis et al. 2018). These collective actors embody democratic means for social and political participation due to their capacity to influence the allocation and distribution of power and resources. These TSOs cover a wide repertoire of activities, initiatives and networks of cooperation. In the case of Switzerland, the organisational solidarity across the fields of (un)employment and immigration comprises various organisational forms, referring to a heterogenic family of voluntary groups, informal and formal organisations (Passy 1999; Baglioni and Giugni 2014). Laumann and Knoke (1987) developed a theoretical framework to study relationships between social structure (relationships among organisations) and political decisions, often used to describe organisational settings within policy domains. Following their analysis, a policy domain concerns a substantive set of actors, events and coherent issues, which delimits its constituent membership. That said, in our analysis we are also interested in understanding the interdependencies and organisational gaps between two apparently separate domains ((un)employment and immigration). For our analysis, we will notably rely on the concepts of vertical solidarity (top-down solidarity related to humanitarian and philanthropic ideals) and horizontal solidarity (bottom-up solidarity related to human rights and empowerment ideals). Scholars have highlighted that these approaches are often associated with different types of organisations. For instance, vertical solidarity is related to formalised, centralised and highly professionalisedorganisations, whereas horizontal solidarity is more connected to smaller, informal and loose organisations dealing more with local issues (Moulaert and Ailenei 2005; Baglioni and Giugni 2014). By virtue of the link between the solidarity orientations and the organisational structure of the TSOs, we also dig into the relationship between the institutionalisation of the organisations and their internal legitimacy, concerning the norms and rules that govern organisational structures, solidarity practices and cooperation between organisational actors in the fields. In sum, the analysis of the TSOs’ beneficiaries, activities, values and level of institutionalisation allows for the characterisation and comparison of TSOs between and within immigration and (un)employment fields and to see how/whether they overlap or not.

Historically, as for most Western European countries, solidarity organisations and movements in Switzerland first derived from perspectives focusing on human rights and aid-relief with a traditional assistance-oriented praxis. They were later complemented by a political praxis focusing on immigrants’ rights (Giugni and Passy 2001). This second aspect of the solidarity movement praxis in Switzerland refers to the polarisation of immigrant issues brought about by important waves of immigrants dating back to the late 1970s. Switzerland’s history of immigration policy is characterised by active economic recruitment policies, opening doors to foreign labour forces when needed, while holding restrictive integration and naturalisation policies (Klöti et al. 2007; Ruedin and D’Amato 2015). Over the last 50 years, foreign nationals have accessed Swiss territory mainly based on economic interests. Yet, today, third country nationals also migrate to the country because of family reunification, education or asylum application reasons. In this context, Swiss policy-makers have become gradually aware of the economic and social costs of non-integration of immigrants (D’Amato et al. 2019; Steiner and Wanner 2019). These concerns have led them to promote integration both as an individual duty (conditional upon the requirements and individual responsibilities of a foreign person) and as a priority to be addressed by policy-makers at all administrative levels (Mexi et al. 2020). This pragmatic and restrictive approach to integration has evolved over time. Currently, the Swiss Confederation has developed targeted integration measures (for instance: language learning, training, labour market and socio-cultural integration programmes) as core objectives to current immigrant and labour policy regimens (DEFR and SEM 2018). The positive impact of immigration on the Swiss economic growth has also generated challenges for both immigration and (un)employment labour policies, making their development inevitably intertwined. Their interdependence is still ongoing today; through our analysis, we focus on the predominant role of immigration as the key driving factor of these changes.

Etienne Piguet (2013: 11) divides the latest history of immigration in Switzerland into five major phases. The first phase (1948–1962) is characterised as an open period in which the government sets recruitment agreements in particular with Italy and Spain, whose country nationals accounted for more than half of all foreign national workers in the late 1970s (Vidal Coso and Ortega-Rivera 2016). The great need for foreign workers translated into a “Gastarbeiter” (guest worker) regime, where workers were granted seasonal or temporary permits. The guest worker programmes were set in place to boost the Swiss economy while preventing permanent settlement of immigrant workers (Ruedin and D’Amato 2015: 141). The second period (1963–1973) is characterised by increasing xenophobic attitudes from the Swiss population towards immigrant workers that translated into governmental measures to limit the immigrant labour force. The first world oil crisis (1973–1984), however, resulted in a strong solidarity movement in favour of immigrants who remained in the country after losing their jobs and who lived under precarious conditions, marking the third period of immigration history. During this period, Swiss solidarity movements strongly advocated for social integration measures, which did not conceive immigrants as a temporary workforce anymore. The perception of immigrants’ integration in terms of non-permanent workers shifted to assimilating immigrants into Swiss society (Giugni and Passy 2002; Ruedin et al. 2015). The fourth period (1985–1992) marked the second wave of large-scale immigration. The quota system was more flexible, and almost 50,000 new permits were issued every year and 130,000 seasonal workers entered the country. From this period until today, the diversification of immigrants’ countries of origin and reasons for immigration (such as reunification, education or asylum) have increased, resulting in greater concerns about managing cultural diversity (Ruedin and D’Amato 2015: 143). During the fifth period, the implementation of the Bilateral Agreement and its impact on the free movement of persons in 2002 was a turning point as it completed the Swiss immigration two-circle model (Bolzman 2007). This model conceives two different kinds of immigrant populations: the first circle comprises people coming from EU/European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries and the second circle involves people from all other countries (third country nationals). To enter the country, the latter group is curtailed by working permit quotas limited to short-stay residence permits mainly for qualified workers. Additionally, we can detect a new phase of the immigration policy regime with more restrictive immigration policies that began in 2014, when the right-wing “initiative against mass immigration”, supported by 50.3% of Swiss voters, requested the re-establishment of quotas for all categories of foreigners, including European citizens (van der Brug et al. 2015; Mexi et al. 2020).

Broadly speaking, this short historical overview of the Swiss immigration regime allows us to consider at the institutional level the long-standing relationship between immigration and the labour market. Thus, the labour market and immigration policies have been translated into a variety of permit durations and rights. Depending on their labour integration, migrants may be categorised in various ways (immigrant, immigrant worker, workers, etc.) and would thus rely on different organisational structures. Previous analyses of civil societies and non-profit sectors have highlighted that organisational structures matter, because they are tied back to specific ways of organising tasks and activities and represent shared norms, rules and legitimacy, which are themselves defined by the organisational environment (DiMaggio 1987; Powell and Steinberg 2006). Through our interviews, we examine how this categorisation from the top could reflect on the organisational issue within and between the fields of immigration and (un)employment, analysing how associations respond to the complexity of immigrant workers’ legal status and precarity.

In terms of methods, we thus present an in-depth analysis of 20 qualitative interviews realised with TSOs across the fields of (un)employment and immigration. The selected TSO sample was drawn from the 289 TSOs mapped at the national level (TransSOL 2016). The following findings grasp fine-grained information on the TSOs’ activities, concerns and solidarity views. The sample selection criteria prioritised a bottom-up approach: it focused on informal, non-professional groups and organisations, including activist groups, umbrella organisations, networks, help groups and service-oriented organisations, as well as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), unions, non-profit organisations and social enterprises.

To study the interdependence between fields, we analyse and compare three key organisational features among our sample of collective actors in relationship with key policy imperatives:

• 1. the beneficiaries and target groups defined by TSOs;

• 2. the activities TSOs engage in; and

• 3. the frames and solidarity orientations of the TSOs in relation to their level of institutionalisation.

Taken together, these three features allow us to look into the organisational responses to immigrant and worker policy regimes, by looking at activities associated with the legal status and vulnerabilities of the beneficiaries—immigrant/working population—and the frames mobilised by the organisations engaging on their behalf.

Comparing Immigration and (Un)employment Fields

Swiss (un)employment and immigration TSOs are located at the intersection of fields: the (un)employment organisations face issues related to permits and legal status for workers, unemployed people and immigrants, whereas migration associations aim at the cultural integration of immigrants, which mostly implicitly includes the immigrants’ integration into the labour market. Hence, the analysis of this chapter relies on comparing organisational features across fields while looking into the institutional and policy frameworks in which TSOs deploy their actions. Our analysis follows a double-comparison approach. It assesses solidarity both within fields of immigration and (un)employment and across fields, emphasising similarities and differences between organisations.

Beneficiaries and Target Groups

Comparing Association Within the Immigration Field

In our analysis, with respect to beneficiaries, we differentiate between two groups of associations in the immigration field. The first group of associations includes mostly service-oriented organisations engaging in the cultural integration of immigrants, targeting mainly newcomers or asylum seekers. These targeted groups are the most vulnerable immigrants, as they often do not speak the local language and are low-skilled workers, with relevant difficulties for the recognition of their diploma and with little or no financial resources.

We don’t (…) reach expatriates (…) nor do we reach academics or people who come with very good employment training because they are well-trained people and we are mainly addressing people with few or no qualifications. (Migr1 10/2016)

These groups of people share in most cases precarious legal status. Some of them are undocumented immigrants or asylum seekers. Hence, added to their precarious legal status, these immigrants have often experienced traumatic situations and therefore display overlapping vulnerabilities. Additionally, some of these organisations target immigrants that come through family reunification, predominantly women with few or no qualifications. The following quote illustrates how gender is a key component for the TSOs’ organisational solidarity towards the most vulnerable groups:

Our association works only with women. We do so to allow people who might not otherwise go to a place for training because of traumatic experiences (…) it is people coming out of trafficking, prostitution, who have been raped during their immigration journey or whose culture of origin makes it totally impossible to imagine the person learning in a mixed environment. (Migr1 10/2016)

The second group of associations includes political or policy-oriented groups that focus on precarious immigrants and their rights, with particular attention given to people concerned with asylum procedures. These organisations focus on the promotion of individual rights and operate in a political context.

The collective exists to give voice to people who do not have a voice (…). They do not have so many opportunities to be heard (…). We try to show them that they have rights (…). Finally, our goal is also to give rights to those without rights. (Migr4 10/2016)

In recent years, our focus has been on the asylum policy. Before we were an association that was active on other themes, on immigration policy in general and in the field of the defense of undocumented immigrants. These are not topics that have been completely abandoned, but it must be said that, given the space that the debate on asylum is taking up in Switzerland, we have concentrated our activities in this field in recent years. (Migr3 10/2016)

We suggest that organisations in the immigration field differentiate between types of immigrants, excluding the less vulnerable immigrants groups from their major beneficiaries—immigrants with a more secure immigration status or well integrated into the labour market. We observe that both types of organisations operating in the immigration field focus on asylum seekers/refugees or immigrants with precarious status. However, while limited knowledge of the local language and/or low qualification skills act as the main criteria for beneficiaries among service-providing associations, it is mainly the political/legal status of the immigrants that serves as a major criterion among beneficiaries across the immigrant political or policy-oriented groups. This also explains why cultural integration associations (mostly service-oriented) vary more strongly with respect to beneficiary groups, caring for specific needs such as female immigrants outside the asylum procedure. In contrast, political or policy-oriented groups target generalised groups of immigrants or asylum seekers; their beneficiaries are conceived in more homogenous terms and their claims vary with respect to political circumstances.

Comparing Associations Within the (Un)employment Field

As for the immigration associations, we first distinguish the organisations in the (un)employment field through their target group: some of them primarily focus on employed people and others on unemployed people. In the first group, we obviously find unions who defend employees. Their target group is defined by working status. For instance, some of these employment TSOs define their beneficiaries as such:

Generally speaking, our mission is to defend people who are employed and who, in principle, earn a fairly decent living. (Unemp2 09/2016)

The second biggest group is concerned with the working poor (or underemployed), the unemployed and people who rely on social help.

The objectives and approach of the association is to defend the individual and collective interests of unemployed workers, precarious workers and the working poor. (Unemp5 08/2016)

Thus, both types of associations in this field define their target groups through their status on the labour market, speaking as/for and providing services to beneficiaries that are somewhat mutually exclusive. Whereas one type targets workers with decent working conditions, in addition to side programmes for unemployed/precarious workers, the other one only addresses either unemployed individuals or the working poor.

Comparing Beneficiaries Across Fields

There is a clear distinction between associations in the immigration and in the (un)employment fields with respect to the definition of their target groups: the first delimit the beneficiary population based on migration status whereas the latter identify their beneficiaries by their employment and precarious working situation. However, immigrants and workers are not mutually exclusive groups. Organisations in the employment field do not actively exclude immigrants as beneficiaries. They consider immigrants as constituents of the labour market force and at least in the past, as important contributors to their organisation.

Immigrants as workers are members; actually, Italian workers were strongly politicised and are an important source of membership to our organisation. (Unemp2 09/2016)

In this sense, a person with an immigration background is just another “worker” with her immigration status remaining latent while integrated into the labour market. It is only when the person is subject to administrative burden related to a working permit or because of material barriers to access the labour market (language, skills, recognition of diploma, implementation of national directives at the cantonal level) that the worker is seen as an immigrant by the (un)employment TSOs.

Figure 9.1 illustrates the criteria on which immigration and employment associations define their constituents. The black line refers to the beneficiaries of the (un)employment TSOs’ domain where the immigration status remains latent. The yellow one refers to a simplified version of the beneficiaries of the immigration associations. The shift in the categorisation of the immigrant/worker status starts at the level of “unemployed/low-skilled immigrants”. This suggests that when a foreign worker loses her job, she is no longer categorised with respect to her employment condition, but by her immigrant journey.

Fig. 9.1

Organisational beneficiaries in the fields of (un)employment and migration

These different groups of beneficiaries seem to be the result of historical developments and reflect the policy framework in which they were brought in and which continues to delimit their functioning. As seen in section “Civic Engagement and Organised Solidarity in Switzerland: Previous Research”, at the early phase, Switzerland’s immigration history was heavily shaped by strong labour demand implemented through the government guest worker programme aimed at preventing permanent settlement of immigrant workers in the territory (Ruedin and D’Amato 2015: 141). During that period, immigrants were only considered as part of the workforce and the political context did not call for cultural integration. Initially, immigrants were allowed to stay as workers while their immigrant status was latent and accompanied by economic autonomy. However, the solidarity movement in favour of immigrants emerged in reaction to the first world oil crisis (1973–1984) claiming immigrants should be able to remain in the country despite losing their jobs. This shift in the perspective implicated a strong call for social integration policies to assimilate immigrants into Swiss society (Ruedin et al. 2015). Yet, this demand could not be met by the TSOs in the (un)employment field, which up to that time acted as immigrants’ main point of reference. It is therefore at this point that associations beyond the (un)employment field mostly emerged with the aim to advance immigrants’ cultural integration and rights. This somewhat clear division between associations in the immigration and (un)employment fields with respect to their corresponding beneficiary groups, as shown through our analysis, still reflects this historical development and duality.

Activities

Comparing Associations Within the Immigration Field

Organisations in the immigration field can also be differentiated with regard to their set activity-focus. The first type of associations in this field is service-oriented TSOs, which emphasise the cultural integration of immigrants. The legal framework has heavily influenced their activities, with integration being one of the major pillars of the Federal Act on Foreign Nationals (FNA).²

Art. 4 Integration

• 1. The aim of integration is the co-existence of the resident Swiss and foreign population on the basis of the values of the Federal Constitution and mutual respect and tolerance.

• 2. Integration should enable foreign nationals who are lawfully resident in Switzerland for the longer term to participate in the economic, social and cultural life of the society.

• 3. Integration requires willingness on the part of the foreign nationals and openness on the part of the Swiss population.

• 4. Foreign nationals are required to familiarise themselves with the social conditions and way of life in Switzerland and in particular to learn a national language.

Service-oriented TSOs frame and partly finance their activities by ascribing to the FNA integration mandate. Most of these associations aim at improving immigrants’ integration into the daily life of the host community, by providing cultural and languages classes, as well as “citizenship courses” favoring a better understanding of the Swiss political environment.

The process of teaching French is an essential tool for integration and insertion in general. French is also an excuse for us to get these women out of isolation, to break their daily lives. (Migr1 10/2016)

All we’re doing is making a connection with Swiss culture. We help immigrants to integrate (Migr2 10/2016)

We talk about citizenship, how the voting process takes place, the different levels of democracy in Switzerland. We have a group that goes every year to Bern to visit the federal palace with a group of women. (Migr1 10/2016)

These activities mainly target immigrants who have low language skills and whose legal status is often precarious. Culture and language, evoked in the FNA law, paragraph 4, are the main subjects of these associations’ activities. They are central tools for a short-term stay but also essential for a potential long-term residency that would imply participation “in the economic, social and cultural life of the society” (FNA paragraph 2). That said, integration is based on a mutual effort, from the immigrant population but also from the Swiss society. In this sense, TSOs connect nationals and foreigners, not only on the basis of volunteering but also by organising activities with the host community, contributing to the idea of “co-existence” that prevails in the FNA’s first paragraph.

The second group of associations (political or policy-oriented) tends to contest the legal framework on immigration. They hold claims at the cantonal and national level, but also appeal for a broader change internationally. Although they might have personal contact with immigrants, they are not service-oriented at their core. They act as a movement opposing restrictive laws or procedures towards immigrants. The activities held by this kind of associations are mainly political (campaigns, lobbying, demonstrations). Most of these actions target asylum seekers and refugees who are struggling with the legal framework or who are subject to immediate removal. Most of these TSOs mobilise on behalf of immigrants’, refugees’ or asylum seekers’ rights rather than mobilising immigrants themselves.

At the individual level, we support and defend; we try to do things for people we know and who come to the association. In collective action, we demand the right to housing, to decent conditions for everyone. For those we know, for those we don’t know and who are in the same situation. (Migr4 10/2016)

The activities provided by both types of associations tend to complement each other. Whereas service-oriented TSOs seek cultural integration and deliver services in direct contact with their beneficiaries, political-oriented TSOs undertake political actions that strive for improving the principles of the law that constrain immigrants’, refugees’ and asylum seekers’ rights. Furthermore, we observe that these activities still mirror the reason why most of these TSOs were initially created in the mid-1980s. Their activities echo social integration measures and simultaneously demonstrate the persistence of the cultural integration scope in the field of immigration. However, these activities also exhibited the gap between the fields of immigration and employment: the activities were not conceived as key for immigrants’ integration into the labour market.

Comparing Associations Within the (Un)employment Field

With respect to the (un)employment field, independently of the main beneficiary group, all TSOs engage in the provision of services and political action. However, with respect to the political aspect, we observe that a set of organisations, such as unions and umbrella associations, engage primarily within institutional politics: lobbying, parliament interventions and policy discussions. That said, some of their service provision activities, such as legal assistance, also entail a political character:

Our role is to analyse everything that is happening in Switzerland in terms of changes in the laws, among others, that may have repercussions in terms of financial policy on employees. (Unemp1 08/2016)

We regularly respond by telephone to very practical questions, particularly legal questions, about employees’ rights and duties in a specific situation. (Unemp1 08/2016)

On the other hand, TSOs concerned with the working poor (or the underemployed), the unemployed and people who rely heavily on social insurances or assistance provide administrative and legal counselling, job-searching and social services to their members. For instance, they provide groups and meeting points for the beneficiaries to discuss and interact with people in similar situations. Additionally, they undertake political activities through less institutionalised channels. They often engage in protest-oriented actions, notably by mobilising their members:

We help with job search or we do legal aid; we have sometimes taken cases to the federal court (…)[our] tasks (…) are both individual consultations for administrative legal questions or socio-professional orientation, (…) and then a more associative component, more oriented towards collective action with public interventions, working groups, activities and collective projects to be developed. (Unemp5 08/2016)

We observe that both types of associations in the (un)employment field pursue similar activities: on the one hand, they provide services to their members, and on the other hand, they act at the political level. What differentiates them is mostly the type of political action. Indeed, employment organisations adopt a less protest-oriented but more policy-lobbying-oriented approach than unemployment organisations. Hence, employment organisations display a more mainstream, uncontentious, collaborative and professionalised approach, whereas unemployment associations engage in protest-oriented, critical and confrontational activities. Later on, we suggest why some of these differences depend on the TSOs’ organisational structure but also respond to the employment legal framework. Switzerland has developed a system of active labour market policies for the unemployed or for people having difficulty accessing the labour market that focuses on job-related training, language courses, subsidies for employers and temporary employment programmes (Bonoli 2017). However, these types of programmes are mostly subject to or dependent on ordinary structures (governmental institutions and channels). As a result, the protest-oriented TSOs engage mainly with the individuals who find themselves at the “end of their unemployment rights” and fight against the stigmatisation that unemployed people and precarious workers constantly are subject to due to the economic-autonomy principle intrinsic to the law.

Comparing Activities Across Fields

The analysis revealed that in the immigration field, there is a clear distinction between associations providing services and associations oriented towards political goals. In the (un)employment field, even though all TSOs provide services and engage in political action, the distinction between the organisations is related to the political channels used to mobilise and obtain their political goals.

In addition, our analysis suggests that linkages between the two fields of TSOs activities are mainly indirect. The (un)employment framework does not caveat programmes for immigrants’ labour integration due to structural preconditions like speaking the local language and/or by administrative burdens related to permit status. By focusing on the cultural integration of immigrants, TSOs in the immigration field provide a first step towards the integration of immigrants into the labour market. Thus, language classes and collective activities could be considered as the very first step towards integration but mostly towards cultural integration. Indeed, representatives did not explicitly make any direct connection between their activities and labour integration. They indicated that the integration into the labour market is not their main priority, unlike cultural integration. Additionally, grassroots associations in the immigration field are even less concerned with the integration of immigrants into the labour market. As previously explained, organisations in the immigration field still reflect the purpose for which they were initially established. They missed building bridges to the organisations operating in the (un)employment field.

On the other hand, associations working in the (un)employment field do not actively exclude immigrants as beneficiaries of the undertaken activities. Unions mainly defend people who are currently working. Immigrant workers can refer to them and benefit from their activities as long as their demands do not diverge from those of other workers. Again, this reflects the entrenchment of immigration and labour market policies in which immigrants were initially identified in terms of their working status with their immigration status remaining latent and key to their lack of recognition as a group. However, once immigrant status becomes predominant because of administrative issues and legal precariousness, associations in the employment field tend not to deal with immigrant-specific questions themselves (for instance, permit-related and renewal) and reorient immigrants with this kind of problem towards other organisations in the immigration field:

With regard to questions of permits, residence or establishment, we collaborate with other associations. (Unemp5 08/2016)

To sum up, the activities undertaken by organisations in the immigration field focus on immigrants but are mainly linked to their cultural integration, leaving the labour market integration of immigrants as a side aspect. Alternatively, the activities of the employment field are linked to the protection of workers, their rights and/or their reintegration into the labour market. However, these organisations adopt a functional perspective, including immigrants solely in terms of their status as workers with limited programmes encompassing immigrant-specific characteristics.

Level of Institutionalisation, Frames and Cooperation

Now we look at the institutional frames mobilised by the representatives of the organisations in the fields of immigration and (un)employment. We rely on the concepts of vertical and horizontal solidarity to interpret how TSOs shape their frames in relation to their level of institutionalisation³ and cooperation with public institutions and other actors in the field. We argue that the level of institutionalisation, the value frames that organisations mobilise, and their degree of cooperation and networking are intertwined. On the one hand, institutional features condition the extent of cooperation. On the other hand, cooperation needs to be legitimised by referring to a certain coherence of ideals and value frames.

Comparing Associations Within the Immigration Field

Associations working on cultural integration play a key role in the implementation of Art. 4 FNA. They are subsidised by cantonal institutions and collaborate in close ties with other social services and authorities. The strong partnership with the authorities aims at ensuring that their activities meet the current needs of the cantons and of their beneficiaries, by guaranteeing compliance with the guidelines and objectives defined by the legal framework:

The language integration course project is part of an integration institutional project called Language and Training. We respond to this request because it is the integration office that subsidises us. (Migr2 10/2016)

Nevertheless, strong ties to institutional mandates also translate into relevant financial dependence on state/cantonal institutions, which also influences TSOs’ structures. Most of these organisations exhibit a relatively high degree of formalisation and professionalisation and a relevant share of paid employees. That said, they tend to consider their dependency on public institutions as mutually beneficial due to their gateway role with regard to immigrant communities.

We have been participating for several years in a cantonal campaign to prevent excision and female genital mutilation, where we are also very active because we are a gateway for this public and the authorities may want to set up something but without access to the communities, it is not possible. We are one of the gateways for issues related to human trafficking (…) we participate at different levels with social institutions, the police and hospital. (Migr2 10/2016)

There is relevant cooperation between organisations oriented towards cultural integration of immigrants and state institutions. Although such cooperation might be beneficial to immigration associations, the existing legal framework also implies limitations. On several occasions, the organisations discussed limited financial means that restrict the geographical scale of their activities and the size of the target groups. They mostly serve people who live in the same city or in the same canton where the organisation is based. This geographical limitation of solidarity could be considered as a direct consequence of the Swiss political system. Indeed, most of the interviewees referred to a differentiated cantonal implementation of the federal law within the immigration field. Likewise, representatives of cultural integration organisations restrained from critical discourse against authorities. They neither expressed major disagreement with institutional aims nor articulated opposing political opinions.

In contrast, political or policy-oriented associations in the field of immigration displayed critical opinions against authorities and public institutions. Their political frames were key aspects of their activities, and even though they sometimes exchange views with politicians or engage in lobbying activities, they mobilised and out-voiced frames of political distrust and anti-establishment. The following quote shows these TSOs’ lack of trust in political actors and legal institutions, which is often replaced by trust in collective actors and civil society:

I no longer have any confidence in the law, which could eventually change, with the SVP making an initiative when they want, on lies (…) with a completely false speech about refugees, the population votes and votes for protection. For their protection, that’s clear (…). I don’t trust the laws (…). I trust the resistance of civil society and I think it will intensify. (Migr3 10/2016)

Additionally, this type of TSO does not rely on public subsidies and displays a lower degree of institutionalisation. They are considerably less structured than cultural integration organisations and are strongly characterised by non-hierarchical decentralised structures.

We don’t get any state subsidies and that’s the most important thing; it’s really a principle (…) The rule is: we don’t get any state subsidies. (Migr3 10/2016)

We have a collective, we have people who have registered, there is no [financial] contribution. There is no hierarchy. There is no leader, or anything. (Migr4 10/2016)

On the one hand, TSOs focusing on cultural integration are highly institutionalised, strongly active at the local level and have regular contact with state/cantonal institutions. Given their institutional dependency, these organisations are less vocal towards public institutions and about their beneficiaries’ legal statuses. In contrast, the second group of associations, namely the political or policy-oriented organisations, lacks financial resources and organisational ties to the authorities. Similarly, these organisations are rather decentralised, dispose of horizontal organisational structures, and their low degree of institutionalisation relates to their strong political views against institutional dependency. Political-oriented organisations therefore complement the cultural integration-oriented organisations by challenging immigration and integration policies, aiming at the recognition of immigrants’ rights. These two types of organisation (political vs. cultural integration) thus represent two aspects of solidarity. On the one hand, grassroots organisations are oriented towards horizontal solidarity through ideals of social justice and equality and are thus in line with ideals of moral responsibility and human bonding. On the other hand, cultural integration organisations are oriented towards vertical solidarity, notably by providing services and promoting values related to altruism and philanthropy, thus both relate to more vertical views of solidarity.

Comparing Associations Within the (Un)employment Field

The difference between the associations defending workers and the associations defending the unemployed or working poor is also salient at the level of frames and degrees of institutionalisation. As previously illustrated, employment organisations engage in institutionalised political action. Additionally, they display highly diversified organisational structures (professionalised) and strong sectorialisation of roles. They ensure close ties with politicians while framing their activities within their political role of counterbalancing as the workers’ mouthpiece in labour-market partnerships.

Today we are trying to establish relations with practically all the parties. For several years now, we have held meetings once or twice a year with the leaders of the various Swiss parties (Unemp1 08/2016)

We mainly act at the level of the national legal framework conditions to try to modify a certain number of parameters of law, directives or other fields in favour of employees. (Unemp1 08/2016)

On the other hand, associations defending the unemployed or working poor are much less integrated into the political arena, and hence, their cooperation with political actors is considerably weaker. Their lack of access to institutional channels also translates into less professionalised and sectorial structures, where several roles converge under the same umbrella:

Sometimes we are heard by a Grand Council committee or consulted by trade unions or parties on a specific issue, but there is no follow-up, no concrete network. It is occasional, almost accidental. (…) We do not have much political support; unemployment is not a very sexy subject for politicians! (Unemp5 08/2016)

Due to the fact that their action takes place at the margins of formal institutions, unemployment associations engage in more contentious politics; they organise demonstrations or political performances to increase their visibility and impact, and they mobilise frames that question the system as a whole:

People tend to believe – or are led to believe – that their problems are purely personal and individual. It is part of our job to obliterate this guilt, to show that there are things that are part of the system and that are not related to people’s psyche or temperament. The issue of unemployment, underemployment, and employment, in general, is a social, historical and economic process and not correlated to their psyche. (…) Sometimes the only and last way is to go and occupy a company or demonstrate outside the cantonal employment office (Unemp5 08/2016)

Moreover, these associations share a conception of collective action as a voicing mechanism, enhancing the individual empowerment of their beneficiaries. The below-mentioned quote further illustrates that frames of empowerment and emancipation are at the core of the organisations working in the unemployment field:

The autonomy of individuals is the principle that guides our action. When we help a person with administrative or legal procedures, it is with her/his involvement (…). The beneficiary remains the owner of the action. (…) We are not in a practice of delegation, mothering or representation. When we are in an action to denounce something, the people concerned must be on the front line and we are there with them. (Unemp5 08/2016)

In that sense, they distinguish themselves from employment organisations whose action frames are less confrontational and mainly deployed within the institutional arena. The following quotation illustrates that TSOs in the employment field stress frames of individual responsibility rather than frames of social change and empowerment. They indeed address issues of social and economic autonomy, and they conceive subsidiarity as a way of favouring a bottom-up approach: the organisation only carries out tasks that cannot be accomplished by the individual:

We refer to (…) social values; these are not religious values as such, but rather values of solidarity, of subsidiarity, therefore a number of values that emphasise the responsibility of the person and dialogue rather than confrontation. (Unemp1 08/2016)

Likewise, when looking at cooperation between TSOs in the field, we observe that the linkages are very weak between trade unions and unemployment associations and in most cases suggest opposing roles:

The trade union movement has lost much interest in this issue, at least in Switzerland. The issue of unemployment and underemployment is not a very lucrative area for trade unions. (…) In their analysis, unemployment is not a matter of workers but of social cases. And I think that the associations of the unemployed should develop a conflictual collaboration with the trade unions. (Unemp5 08/2016)

These findings suggest that in the Swiss field of (un)employment, TSOs diverge with regard to the organisational frames and channels used to mobilise their actions, which also influence their degree of professionalisation and sectorialisation.

Comparing Frames, Institutionalisation and Cooperation Across Fields

When we compare the frames mobilised in the immigration and (un)employment fields and their connectedness with institutional and policy frameworks, we observe that TSOs operating in the labour market field account for a more territorial-based perspective. This perspective is translated into specialised tripartite agreements and sets out a legal framework structuring working relationships and labour market conditions as an enclosed domain. Contrarily, in the immigration field, agreements like the Geneva Convention and the transnational refugee movement have crafted and challenged the immigration domestic policy regime and continue to do so. In addition, the strong politicisation of immigration issues in Switzerland is a result of the multicultural pressures caused by immigration. External diversity brought by immigration challenged previous labour and social policies, which had been formerly mostly successful in managing the existing cantonal diversity (Fleiner 2002, Fernández G. G. and Abbiate 2018).

If we focus on protest-oriented TSOs in both fields, we observe convergence with respect to the frames that the organisations mobilise. These TSOs share frames concerning social justice and their aims are strongly connected to the type of beneficiaries they support. By focusing on immigrants, TSOs in this field hold ideals of moral responsibility and human rights that allow clustering immigrants within various vulnerable groups. In contrast, (un)employment TSOs display ideals of social change and empowerment through ideals of mutuality and community belonging between beneficiaries. The dissimilarities in the TSOs’ guiding principles could be the result of a complex policy specialisation in both domains and the previously discussed diversification of the immigration field.

It becomes clear that in both fields, TSOs vary in their degree of institutionalisation. Interestingly, the extent of institutionalisation is different in both fields when comparing associations whose primary focus is oriented towards service provision or towards political activities. Whereas service-providing organisations in the immigration field are highly institutionalised, political and policy-oriented TSOs are not. On the other hand, unemployment TSOs that provide services do not dispose of a high degree of institutionalisation, whereas policy-oriented employment organisations such as unions are extremely institutionalised. Additionally, there is little indication of cooperation between the fields of immigration and (un)employment:

Indeed, we have little interaction with associations that defend either the unemployed, asylum seekers, undocumented immigrants or certain immigrants. We are relatively far from these groups of people and the associations that represent them (…) in the regions and even in the cantons, there are branches, and solidarity actually moves to that level. (Unemp1 08/2016)

To sum up, Fig. 9.2 suggests how activities, political aims and degrees of institutionalisation are related within fields and between fields. With respect to activities, these are fairly similar across fields. However, the aims of political action diverge across and within fields, as well as the degree of institutionalisation. Weaker cooperation with state authorities translates into political aims of social change and justice, which convey more anti-establishment positions and favour less institutionalisation. This is the case for political and policy-oriented immigration organisations and TSOs operating in the field of unemployment.

Fig. 9.2

Frames and organisational solidarity in the fields of (un)employment and immigration

Solidarity Across Fields

Connecting Immigration and Employment Associations

Drawing on the previous analysis, we conclude that associations in the immigration field have limited contact with the (un)employment field TSOs. Although some activities of service providing organisations in the immigration field could be linked to the work integration of immigrants, the interviews with the representatives of such organisations lack any indication of this linkage. Their rigid focus on cultural integration is likely to be historical and related to the sectorialisation of employment policies, which did not contemplate the diversification of immigrants’ journeys—moving from (male) guest workers beneficiaries to family reunification and refugees. That said, while previous guest worker groups had established associations to improve integration into the labour market of their peers in the 1960–1970s, the shift from the governmental guest worker programme to long-term immigration and the establishment of a common intra-European labour market superseded their activity, and more specialised immigrant-related association started flourishing.

Organisations in the (un)employment field deal with immigration, albeit to a limited extent. Actually, the topic of immigration was often part of the interviews with the representatives of unions or unemployment associations. As immigrants play an important role in the labour market, these organisations are sensitive to new immigration policies, public opinion or international contexts. From their point of view, immigration is constituent of the labour market. Although some organisations have adopted programmes that focus on immigrants as a sub-group of workers, their focal point appears to be not on the integration of immigrants into the labour market but on reducing the inequalities between nationals and foreigners once in the labour market. Again, this is an indication that immigrants are first and foremost seen as workers:

There is a lot of work to be done, in our opinion, to prevent greater disassociation, gaps and xenophobia between workers. This is the main contribution we make as a union: strengthen solidarity in the labour market with more protection to achieve more equality in the labour market, with immigrants but also with other categories of people who are excluded or who have difficulty returning to the labour market. (Unemp1 08/2016)

TSOs in (un)employment field are aware of the barriers immigrants face to access the labour market. Nevertheless, their solidarity lies with the workforce as a whole rather than solidarity with discriminated immigrant workers.

While some connection between immigration and employment exists, the substantial gap between these two interrelated domains concerns mainly immigrants’ labour market integration and access. Immigration associations are little concerned with work integration, and employment associations are not specialised enough on immigrant issues. That said, our analysis also illustrates the existence of a handful of associations, developing programmes to enhance the integration of people with immigration backgrounds into the labour market. Our next section shows how they constitute a first attempt to fill the aforementioned gap.

Specialised Associations: An Attempt to Fill the Gap

As previously presented in Fig. 9.1, immigration and (un)employment associations traditionally adopted different reference groups to define their beneficiaries resulting in two apparently mutually exclusive types of beneficiaries. While immigration organisations delimit their target groups with regard to their immigrant status, (un)employment associations use the employment status as their benchmark. In this section, we present findings on the only two TSOs of our sample that simultaneously take into consideration immigration and employment status when defining their target groups. These associations represent the overlap between the fields of employment and immigration. They help people who are unemployed and in precarious situations, and at the same time, they help immigrants who cannot directly enter the Swiss labour market. Whereas both groups of individuals are jobless, the organisational goals with respect to each of these groups are not the same. The associations differentiate between the target groups due to differing needs and demands:

We have a group of employees with a solidarity employment contract. They are long-term unemployed. With these people, the objective is clearly professional reintegration (…) [whereas] (…) The impact [for asylum seekers] is primarily on self-esteem. To be useful in society, to have a team, colleagues, to have a function in society. There are also more practical aspects to employability, such as mastery of French, knowledge of working customs in Switzerland: being on time, respecting a schedule, knowing work procedures and so on. (Unemp4 07/2016)

Additionally, these organisations benefit from a relatively institutionalised structure. Financially, they are partially supported by cantonal subsidies. The rest of their income comes from the services they provide outside the organisation in the solidarity economy. They also work in close partnership with cantonal institutions dealing with social assistance, unemployment or asylum issues. The organisations themselves presume this cooperation is crucial to their existence:

With the State, we cooperated in social domains (…) we have many collaborations with the social assistance [institutions] for training programmes, internships and solidarity jobs (…) without these collaborations, our association would certainly not exist. (Unemp4 07/2016)

These institutional partnerships reflect also a high degree of institutionalisation, but like associations dealing with the cultural integration of immigrants, these organisations also base the legitimacy of their scope of action on the legal framework. Thus, the reliance on state authorities both financially and legally depoliticises their discourse and activities:

Unemployment is regulated by federal law. Your contributions pay for this insurance, which ultimately allows you to be a part of the system so that people who lose their jobs do not fall into a void. So it can be said that it is a law that is solidary by definition, because it prevents the person from falling into a vacuum, into an emptiness where he or she no longer has enough to live. (Unemp3 10/2016)

However, these associations stand out from the most institutionalised organisations in the immigration field because they consider work as a means of integration. The first factor of integration is not a national language but the work itself. A job comes with an array of skills to learn and notably the language. Work is valuated because the consequences are important in terms of integration:

I think integration is largely through work. We can realise that the differences between cultures are not as great as we sometimes imagine. And if you have a salary, you can pay taxes, get an apartment, and so on. (Unemp4 07/2016)

The activities carried out by these two TSOs illustrate a combination of services traditionally offered by cultural integration associations, such as language courses, and services usually undertaken by unemployment organisations like administrative help regarding the labour market and offers of a (temporal) place to work. Thus, we could consider that these TSOs respond to the most recent policy changes in the immigration and (un)employment fields, which will enter into force in 2018–2020 and define integration through employability.

As shown throughout our chapter, the interlinkages between labour policies and immigration policies depend on a variety of permits’ duration and rights, which have mostly been approached independently within each field. These two TSOs are an attempt to respond to the traditional categorisation of beneficiaries by connecting various sorts of vulnerabilities between fields. Indeed, since the 1990s, at the institutional and associational level, there has been a debate on the cultural and economic integration of immigrants, and these associations could be considered a side product of this debate. As shown in Fig. 9.3, these associations appear to address some of the gaps formerly discussed. However, several questions remain unaddressed. First, they only tackle people with a refugee status or asylum seekers, thus omitting support for the unemployed/working poor immigrants. Hence, we observe that the associational gap to address the double structural vulnerability of individuals with simultaneous precarious work and immigration status remains very present. Second, even though they are part of the solidarity economy, these organisations are not auto-sustainable; financially they are strongly dependent on public support. This raises another question on how financial and institutional dependency constrains the choice and scope of the organisations’ activities and therefore limits their capacity to potentially address the aforementioned associational gap.

Fig. 9.3

Organisations across fields—an attempt to fill the gap

Conclusion

By reviewing some of the organisational features of the sampled TSOs in the fields of immigration and (un)employment, we found that the diversity with regard to the type of solidarity frames across the two domains could be related to the policy environments that legitimise the organisational solidarity. Organisations in the immigration field predominantly mobilise vertical approaches of solidarity related to altruism and moral responsibility; in addition, they differentiate between immigrant groups with respect to their immigration status. Alternatively, (un)employment organisations mobilised horizontal frames of solidarity, considering their beneficiaries as a homogenous group of either workers, precarious workers or unemployed people, while indirectly overlooking immigrant-specific vulnerabilities and characteristics. While we have outlined relevant differences across the fields’ solidarity frames, we also suggest that with respect to levels of institutionalisation, TSOs across fields show similar organisational traits. In particular, we advance as in previous organisational studies that the level of formalisation and professionalisation of the organisations could also depend on their role in policy domains and access to institutional channels (Piven and Cloward 1977; Diani and Donati 1999; Kriesi 1996).

Additionally, the analysis revealed that immigration organisations struggle to address immigrants’ labour market integration and focus mostly on the cultural aspects of integration, even though several of the activities carried out, such as language classes, contribute to immigrant employability. Their range of actions seems to be the result of the historical development of cultural integration associations that appeared once the Swiss immigration policy shifted from a “guest-worker-only” perspective to a more long-term immigration policy. Similarly, in the (un)employment field, employment organisations consider immigrants indistinctively as part of their target group: workers/working poor/unemployed. Even though we observed some awareness towards immigration-related issues, which were tackled by side programmes, once immigrant economic status deteriorates, (un)employment TSOs become less receptive to and capable of responding to immigrants’ integration issues. Consequentially, these associations often refer immigrants back to TSOs in the field of immigration to deal with questions specific to migratory status. However, this leaves us to conclude that there is still an organisational gap when it comes to immigrants’ integration into the labour market, despite the interconnectivity between the two fields.

Some additional elements, which also prevent us from addressing the interconnections between these fields are, on the one hand, on the “migrants’ side”, barriers related to the migrants’ background and skills. The lack of knowledge of the local language, the lack of qualifications or the difficulty to get one’s diploma recognised effectively hinders the entry of immigrants onto the labour market (Mexi et al. 2020). These are burdens not only for the integration of immigrants in the labour market but also for their access to organisational structures in the (un)employment domain. “Ordinary structures” such as Regional Employment Centres, social assistance or education services are supposed to be accessible to all, but their “material access”, implies basic requirements like knowledge of the local language, which effectively prevents some immigrants from benefitting from these (Mexi et al. 2020). On the other hand, there are also burdens linked to the federalist structure of the Swiss (un)employment and immigration policy regimes. As the cantons are primary responsible for the implementation of national directives, the cooperation between federal level and local actors is weak and differentiated practice across cantons are enhanced (Giraud et al. 2007; Probst et al. 2019).

Furthermore, we advanced that a handful of organisations have started to tentatively overcome the gap between the two fields and address beneficiaries with overlapping vulnerabilities. In this regard, within the recent immigration policy framework, the Swiss integration agenda seeks to improve the employability of refugees and temporarily admitted persons by establishing national guidelines and new integration objectives (Swiss Confederation 2018). However, it remains to be seen whether these new policies enable the practical implementation of organisational solidarity across these two interconnected domains. For instance, the diversity of cantonal integration agendas and the complexity of procedures to gain work permits could hamper the development of activities and programmes of the associations beyond the local level. Thus, the complexity of the legal and federal structure could also obstruct the development of a national solidarity scheme targeting immigrant workers.