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

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Ressource 1Download: Bernhard and Lauener 2024.pdf (432.52 [Ko])
State: Public
Version: Final published version
License: CC BY 4.0
Serval ID
serval:BIB_8A7D57092A3B
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
It's because of the cross-border commuters: opposing the free movement of persons in the Swiss borderlands with the European Union
Journal
Frontiers in Political Science
Author(s)
Bernhard Laurent, Lauener Lukas
ISSN
2673-3145
Publication state
Published
Issued date
09/08/2024
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
6
Language
english
Abstract
Scholarly work on populism and borders have largely followed separate paths so far. This article aims at bringing together these two strands by means of an empirical analysis of individual attitudes on a re-bordering policy in the context of a national-populist mobilization against the free movement of persons. Recent contributions on border regions in affluent countries have highlighted an increased opposition to European integration that is fueled by political actors from the populist radical right. We hypothesize that border residents are more opposed to the free movement of persons than non-border residents the more they are exposed to the influx of cross-border workers. The empirical analysis draws on a representative post-vote survey from the so-called “VOTO studies” on a popular initiative by the radical right that demanded Switzerland’s termination of the free movement of persons with the European Union in 2020. In line with our hypothesis, we find a significant positive interaction effect between border residence and the share of cross-border commuters on the likelihood to vote in favor of this proposition. While border residence turns out to be insufficient to foster increased re-bordering attitudes, we show that the magnitude of incoming cross-border commuters makes a difference.
Keywords
borders, direct democracy, European Union, free movement of persons, populism, radical right, Switzerland
Open Access
Yes
Create date
12/08/2024 14:11
Last modification date
13/08/2024 7:56
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