WHY SWISS-GERMANS DISLIKE GERMANS: Opposition to culturally similar and highly skilled immigrants

The third post-World War II migration wave, which started in Western Europe in the late 1980s, has consisted to a large extent of refugees, asylum seekers, illegal migrants and people rejoining their families (Geddes 2003: 17–9; Messina 2007: 39–46; Schain 2008: 1–4). Accordingly, today's popular image of an immigrant is typically a person who comes from outside Western Europe and who likely comes from a country with a Muslim background. In addition, because the average migrant is likely to have lived in his or her home nation's countryside, he or she is popularly thought to be even more culturally distant from the people in his or her new host society, and also more likely to be badly educated and from a low social class. As a result, xenophobic attitudes are often thought to result from the fact that native people consider these newcomers a threat to their own culture. Moreover, native people who occupy low social classes may fear losing their jobs to these immigrants, perceiving them as an economic threat (Stephan et al. 2008).

One forgets, however, that an increasing number of highly qualified people are migrating to other countries (Deutsche Bank Research 2006: 19; see also Dahlmann and Reith 2008; Wahl 2009: 376–8). International flows of highly skilled migrants are an important aspect of the global economy, and both employers and states have come to depend on such migration in order to maintain a competitive edge (Koser and Salt 1997; Gossel 2008). While they have not been very successful, West European states have tried to restrict the immigration to high skilled migrants since the late 1970s. Moreover, the European integration process has led to increased migration within the European Union (Geddes 2003: ch. 6). So far this kind of immigration has not been politicized and thus does not yet constitute a challenge to Western European states. Nonetheless, one might ask: What would happen if the average immigrant came from a culturally similar country, with a high level of education, and from a high social class? Would the cultural threat of immigration disappear, and would people from high social classes begin to feel economically threatened?

One country where an influx of highly skilled migrants has already led to major controversies is Switzerland. In the city of Zurich especially, violent debates about German migrants have been observed over the last years. Here, in Switzerland's most populous city, Germans now make up the largest immigration group, even outnumbering Italians (the group traditionally associated with immigration to Switzerland) and immigrants from the countries of the former Yugoslavia (who constitute another major and more typical migration group). At present, it is difficult to gauge reactions towards German migration in Switzerland, as very little research has been done on how people react towards immigrants who do not come from culturally distant countries, and who are not from low social classes or badly educated.

Henk Dekker and his colleagues have investigated Dutch peoples’ attitudes towards Germans and Germany (Dekker and Jansen 1995; Aspeslagh and Dekker 1998; Du Bois-Reymond et al. 1999; Dekker et al. 2007). However, their focus was not on attitudes towards German immigrants, but rather towards Germans in Germany. Even if their results yield some explanation of attitudes towards culturally and economically similar immigrants, ultimately their inquiries address a different research area. Indeed, it is reasonable to believe that attitudes towards foreigners in general (i.e., people who live in another country) are different from attitudes towards immigrants in one's country (people who live among us). Hainmueller and Hiscox (2007) present a similar problem. As one of the only studies in this area, their work differentiates between attitudes towards immigrants from richer and poorer countries, both inside and outside Europe (see also Sniderman et al. 2004: 42–43; Hainmueller and Hiscox 2010; Malhotra et al. 2010). However, their respondents have most likely never experienced immigration from richer countries inside Europe. And so, such questions measure a purely hypothetical social phenomenon, and one that has not yet been politicized – especially if we take into account the fact that respondents have been asked about abstract and not concrete categories (such as immigration by Turks or Germans). For these reasons, it can be assumed that respondents likely indicate much more generous positions towards immigrants than they might have, if more specific questions of immigration were posed.

To my knowledge, the only research focusing on attitudes towards highly educated immigrants has been done on attitudes towards Soviet migrants in Israel (Shamai and Ilatov 2001; Canetti-Nisim et al. 2007; Halperin et al. 2007). However, these Soviet migrants are quite different from Israeli Jews, culturally speaking; their Russian cultural identity, and especially their Orthodox Christian faith (which they practice publicly and openly) have triggered perceptions of cultural threat (Canetti-Nisim et al. 2007: 93; Halperin et al. 2007: 183). In a country where religion plays an important role, this aspect is crucial and might explain why, in these studies, threat perception has a similar impact on attitudes not only towards Soviet migrants, but also towards Palestinian citizens of Israel and labor migrants.

While these studies yield some preliminary findings on how people react to highly educated immigrants, things become more complicated when the new immigrant arrivals share similar cultural values to those of their host nations. In Western Europe, where religiosity is very low, this mainly concerns people who share the same liberal values. In order to investigate such a phenomenon in this paper, I focus on reactions towards German migrants in Switzerland. In the following section, I will present relevant trends in the immigration of Germans and people of other nationalities into Switzerland, alongside Swiss attitudes towards these different nationalities. It will appear, unsurprisingly, that attitudes towards people from West European countries are much more positive than attitudes towards those from other regions. Among West Europeans, however, Germans have by far the most negative image. Working from these findings, I will develop and test two arguments that might help us explain germanophobic attitudes, and that appear related to the perception of cultural and economic threat.

One might expect the Swiss not to perceive Germans as a cultural threat, as the two groups are, at least at first sight, culturally similar. However, this argument can be questioned in two ways. First, we must differentiate between objective similarity and subjectively perceived dissimilarity (Zarate et al. 2004). As we will see, the cultural difference between Germans and Swiss-Germans is considered to be very large in Switzerland (Schläpfer et al. 1991: 151–4). Second, some argue that boundaries between groups that are culturally very close are not necessarily less fragile (Jetten et al. 1998; Zürn 1998: 269; Theiler 2004) – an idea that merits strong consideration for our purposes.

In a second step, I consider the common argument that working class people are often xenophobic out of fear that immigrants will take their jobs. As highly educated immigrants become increasingly prevalent it may be that – in our particular case, at least – well-educated people in high positions or still competing on the job market could feel threatened by the new arrivals. This would contradict the argument that better-educated people are more tolerant as they are more open-minded, and have greater cognitive capacities for differentiated perceptions (Wagner and Zick 1995; Vogt 1997; Hagendoorn and Nekuee 1999; Hjerm 2001; Heyder 2003).

German migration to Switzerland has increased sharply over the course of the last 10 years.¹ Since 2005, Germans have constituted the second biggest group of immigrants in Switzerland, after the Italians (and directly leading the Portuguese). In 2007, there were almost 250,000 German residents in Switzerland – and about 336,000 from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, 290,000 Italians and 193,000 Portuguese. In Zurich – the biggest city in Switzerland with around 380,000 inhabitants in 2008 – German immigration has been even more pronounced relative to the rest of Switzerland. Figure 1 shows the progress of various groups of immigrants between 1970 and 2007 in the city of Zurich. After a slight decrease during the 1970s, German immigration is shown to increase at the beginning of the 1990s. Since 2004, Germans constitute the biggest group of immigrants in the city of Zurich. They have even outnumbered Italians, the traditional immigration group to Switzerland, coming out ahead of immigrants from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, that constitute another major and more typical migration group.

The growth of German migration can be explained by the increasing demand for high quality jobs in Switzerland (Dahinden 2008; Sheldon 2008). Moreover, the bilateral treaties between Switzerland and the European Union have made it easier for Swiss employers to employ people from countries in the European Union. The fact that German immigrants come from a neighboring country and speak a similar language explains why mostly Germans and not other West Europeans have migrated to Zurich over the last years (see Wahl 2009: 375).

To better understand attitudes towards Germans, we will contrast these attitudes with those towards the more typical migrants, from the countries of the former Yugoslavia. This group of migrants has also grown larger in the last decades, but for different reasons: in the 1970s and 1980s, people from the former Yugoslavia migrated to Switzerland due to its increasing need for a cheap labor force. Later, the effects of family reunification and the wars in the Balkans further increased the numbers of this group of immigrants (Gianni 2005: 13–4; CFR 2006: 7–8). Since most immigrants from the former Yugoslavia have a Muslim background, this immigration trend has also led to an increase in controversies over how to integrate them (Helbling 2008; Widmer and Strebel 2008; Dolezal et al. 2010). The relatively sharp decrease after 2000 can be explained by a number of different factors: general decrease of immigration from this region, naturalizations, repatriations after the war, and relocations to the suburbs of Zurich.

Over the last several years, German migration has been discussed in countless Swiss newspaper articles (see Imhof 2008). The debate has taken a new turn, however, since the president of the University of Zurich's student council complained in an interview to the ‘Tages-Anzeiger’ (19 December 2007) that there were too many German professors at the University of Zurich – going on to suggest that it was difficult for Swiss students to communicate with them, and that they often arrived with their own staff, making it more difficult for Swiss students to get jobs as research assistants at the university. This interview, and the ensuing violent reactions, help relate the ‘German-topic’ to a concrete object: academic positions (Imhof 2008: 176). With this, it becomes clear (if it were not sufficiently before) that the debate over German migrants is different from other controversies concerning immigrants. This time, it is not poorly educated migrants from culturally distant countries who are the subject of debate, but well-educated people from a neighboring country that speak (basically) the same language.²

While the complex relationship between the Swiss and the Germans has already been the subject of a few works (Altwegg and de Weck 2003 Weck 2010; Pecoraro 2005; Dahinden 2008; Müller-Jentsch 2008), a systematic analysis of the extent of germanophobic attitudes, how they could be explained from a social-scientist perspective, and whether or not they are comparable to reactions to other immigration groups, has yet to be undertaken. This can be explained in part by the fact that most of the relevant surveys have not included questions aimed at measuring indicators that are normally used in studies on xenophobia. The only survey that included relevant questions (and that will be used in the analyses below) was conducted between October 1994 and March 1995 in the city of Zurich, and included over 1,300 interviews with Swiss citizens between the ages of 19 and 66.³

Although the survey was conducted at the place where the debate had been the most intense in the preceding years, it was undertaken at a time when German migration had already started to increase but had not yet reached the high levels we observe today (see Figure 1). Thus, I am unable to conclusively measure the impact of the growth of German migration in this paper. It seems reasonable to hypothesize, however, that the sharp rise in German immigration over the last years has led to an increased number of people with hostile attitudes towards Germans. Various studies have shown that it is not necessarily the percentage of immigrants, but the rapid changes of immigration patterns that leads to conflicts (Meuleman et al.2009; Hopkins 2010: 42–3). Moreover, we can expect that these changes will also likely increase the power of the explanatory factors. Thus, if we can already find some incidence of this phenomenon in the mid-1990s, it can be assumed that these effects will have increased with the growing number of German migrants.

Before we consider potential explanations, we must first ascertain the extent of germanophobic attitudes. Here, the term ‘germanophobia’ connotes negative attitudes towards persons based upon their national or ethnic origin. Following Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), I distinguish between attitudes established by cognition and by behavior (see also Duckitt 2003). For Ajzen and Fishbein (1975: 54, 64) an attitude is ‘a person's general feeling of favourableness and unfavourableness’, and ‘an index of the degree to which a person likes or dislikes an object’. Thus, the term ‘germanophobia’ is used here interchangeably with the expression ‘dislike of Germans’. To be clear: We are not investigating behaviorally expressed dislike regarding Germans, or real discriminatory behaviour.

Figure 2 displays the percentages of people who find the various groups of immigrants ‘not very likable’ or ‘not at all likable’ (see also Stolz 2000: 131–3).⁴ These fall into three clear categories: First, the immigrants from Southern and Western Europe, towards whom hardly any negative attitudes can be found. It is particularly notable that Italians are the most liked immigrants, even though they were the group that attracted the most hostilities during their arrival in the 1950s and 1960s (D'Amato 2001; Niederberger 2004).

At the other end of the scale in Figure 2, we have the three groups that appear most disliked: Turks, Arabs and ex-Yugoslavians. More than half of all respondents indicated that they disliked people from the countries of the former Yugoslavia. In between we have black Africans, Tamils and Germans, who are disliked by around 10 percent of the population of Zurich. There are hardly any black Africans in Zurich, as they migrate mostly to the French part of Switzerland. Tamils constitute another important migration group. Despite the fact that they come from both a geographically and culturally disparate country, they have a relatively good reputation and are regarded as very friendly and quiet (see Moret et al. 2007: 39).

Stolz (2001): 55n33) brings up the historic experiences of World Wars I and II as an explanation for Swiss resentment towards Germans. While Switzerland was not occupied during World War II, Germany's national-socialist heritage had a clear, negative impact upon Switzerland; and this heritage still pops up from time to time in contemporary debate.

While Germany's historical past may be at the root of some people's negative attitudes towards Germans, it is impossible to test this argument with the data I have at hand. In the existing surveys, no questions relevant to this issue have been included. For this reason, I have chosen to focus on two other arguments that have appeared in public debates on occasion, and that can also easily be related to broader discussions in the literature on negative attitudes towards immigrants. The first issue relates to the question of whether German migrants might pose a cultural threat, and the second refers to the possibility that they might constitute an economic threat to well-educated, upper class Swiss citizens.

At first sight, Germans appear very similar to their Swiss counterparts, at least as far as culture is concerned. Because of this, one might expect cultural threats to be absent. Following Stephan et al. (1998: 560) I define a cultural threat as the perceived harm caused by immigrants with distinct morals, norms and values. When an individual believes his or her culture to be threatened by increasing cultural heterogeneity, that person is likely to have more negative feelings towards immigrants. It is important to note that it matters less how objectively similar or dissimilar the two groups appear to outsiders, and more how the differences between the two groups are subjectively perceived. Zarate et al. (2004) rightly argue that the quality of the similarity/dissimilarity (and thus the importance attached to such characteristics) is crucial. Two groups might appear similar when comparing a large range of characteristics, but such criteria may ultimately be considered unimportant by these groups. Indeed, despite apparent similarities, there may be significant tensions between the two groups, stemming from differences that are regarded as fundamental by one or both groups.

In other words, the ranking of out-groups closer or further away from the in-groups depends less on objective criteria (such as language, religion, nationality, skin color, etc.), and more on what is considered socially and culturally acceptable within a group. Schläpfer et al. (1991: 151–4) found that 40.1 percent of their respondents felt that characteristic differences between Germans and Swiss-Germans were significant in nature. As far as Austrians were concerned, 30.4 percent of people perceived similar, large differences. By contrast, only 10.9 percent held the opinion that there were significant characteristic differences between the French and Swiss French, and only 13.6 percent perceived such differences between Italians and Swiss Italians.⁵

Why are Germans considered to be so different from Swiss-Germans? For many, there are two reasons why Swiss-Germans dislike Germans. First, it is thought that Swiss-Germans are jealous of Germans’ cultural, political, scientific and other achievements, and feel inferior. And second, most Swiss-Germans do not appear to speak High German as eloquently as Germans (Schläpfer et al. 1991: 126–61; Stolz 2001: 55n33; Bichsel 2003: 159–63; Teuwsen 2003: 154). The language issue is a particularly good example of how seemingly minor differences can be instrumental delineating group boundaries; while the languages are ‘objectively’ very similar, the small differences between them have been shown to lead to major controversies.⁶

Jetten et al. (1998) have demonstrated that groups that are too similar (as well as groups that are too different) are perceived more negatively by each other than moderately different groups. Borrowing from Sigmund Freund's terminology, Theiler (2004): 648) argues that a situation, such as the one we observe between Swiss-Germans and Germans, has the potential to result in a kind of ‘narcissism of minor difference’. For Theiler, small cultural differences between groups are particularly likely to lead to tensions. Nonexistent cultural boundaries usually mean that there is little competition between groups, and therefore no clear threat to the culture of the host group. And large, stable cultural boundaries are usually perceived as secure by merit of their scale. Small cultural differences, however, are typically fragile and often result, according to Theiler's argument (2004: 648), in ‘subconscious fears of insufficient separation from and damaging exposure to the other category’. Pointing to the same phenomenon, Zürn (1998): 269) argues that the ‘narcissism of minor difference’ is the result of increasing transnationalism that reduces the differences between nation-states, and leads to a situation in which seemingly rather minor cultural differences are emphasized.

Zurich's specific circumstances force us to question another mainstay in the empirical literature on xenophobia and prejudice, as well. Various studies have suggested that well-educated people harbor more positive feelings towards newcomers (Wagner and Zick 1995; Vogt 1997; Hagendoorn and Nekuee 1999; Hjerm 2001; Heyder 2003). It is often argued that education influences our cognitive faculties, social competences, value orientation and social status (Heyder 2003: 78). However, the particulars of how, exactly, education reduces xenophobia remain disputed. Some argue that individuals with a low level of education have limited cognitive capacities for differentiated perceptions and information processing, and are therefore inclined to stereotypical thinking; these people are thought to be more susceptible to interpersonal influence (Stouffer 1955; Maykovich 1975; Case et al. 1989; Hyman et al. 1990). Others hold the opinion that better-educated people travel in social spheres where xenophobic attitudes are considered undesirable (see Kühnel and Schmidt 2002: 85). Still others argue that educated people are better integrated socially and economically, and thus do not perceive immigrants as competitors in the job market.

Hello et al. (2006) set out to test various arguments concerning education's impact on negative prejudices. They found that cognitive sophistication and open-mindedness had a negligible importance in explaining the educational effect. In their study, perceived threat turned out to be the most important factor. In a similar vein, Halperin et al. (2007) found that education's impact on social distance was strongly mediated by perceptions of cultural and economic threat. In other words, better-educated and positioned people appeared to be less prejudiced against immigrants, since they do not compete with them in the job market. But what happens when immigrants are also well-educated? If Hello et al. (2006) and Halperin et al. (2007) are right, we should observe that well-educated Swiss people are not less hostile towards German migrants than other people. Indeed, we should observe different relationships between education and attitudes towards Germans and nationalities that do not compe te with highly educated Swiss.

If education is most closely linked with economic threat perception, we should also observe differing impacts when it comes to social class, job position, and attitudes towards immigrants from high and low social classes. Such socio-economic variables are known in the literature as the natural ‘partners’ of level of education (Halperin et al. 2007: 190). It is often argued that globalization and the opening of national markets pose problems mainly for people from lower social classes (Bornschier and Helbling 2005: 32–6). It has been shown that such people vote more readily for radical-right and populist parties (Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Mughan et al. 2003) and that these so-called ‘losers’ in the globalization processes perceive immigrants as job market competitors. According to the realistic group conflict theory, such competition for access to limited resources leads to conflicts between groups (Stephan et al. 2001: 560). The realistic threats posed by out-groups centre upon the economic power and material wellbeing of the in-group and its members, among other things. A group is considered to be a competitor if it is similar to the in-group on the relevant dimension (Zarate et al. 2004: 100). Since German migrants mostly look for high status jobs, they compete directly with the so-called ‘winners’ of globalization. Because of this, we may infer that highly skilled Swiss may fear their new highly skilled competitors for the same reasons that low-skilled workers fear low-skilled immigrants.

I operationalized my dependent variable with the questions I had already posed in Figure 2. Respondents were asked how likable they find Germans. Since respondents were able to choose among five different categories (‘very likable’, ‘rather likable’, ‘not sure’, ‘not very likable’ and ‘not at all likable’) I will run an ordered logistic regression analysis (see Table 1; for a summary of all variables, see Table A1 in the appendix).⁷

As far as cultural threat is concerned, it is difficult to operationalize relevant concepts and to find indicators that help us measure a potential inferiority complex towards Germans. Such quantitative survey data simply was not collected for the research question discussed here. To test whether or not cultural aspects might influence negative attitudes towards Germans, I do have one tool – a question regarding whether or not respondents agree that Swiss cultural characteristics are in danger (agree = 1). There is no specific question regarding whether Germans (or any other nationalities) put Swiss national characteristics in danger. But this might be for the best, anyhow, since it reduces the danger of eliciting politically correct answers.

It can be assumed that people who have an inferiority complex towards another culture will fear that immigrants from that culture pose a danger to their own. In studies on xenophobia, this question is also commonly used to operationalize anomie, describing disorientation and insecurity triggered by rapid and profound social changes (Hüpping 2006: 86). As we know, small cultural differences between the dominant ethnic group and new immigrants can lead to large-scale cultural fears (Theiler 2004: 648).

Since German migrants compete with the ‘winners’ of globalization, it might be that better-educated and positioned persons will be more likely to have negative feelings towards German migrants. To measure the impact of education, I employ a dichotomized indicator – differentiating whether a respondent has a general qualification for university entrance or not (A-level = 1). For the impact of job position I use two indicators. The first solicited respondents about their current job position, and let them chose from a list of 16 categories. Following Stolz (2000), I dichotomized this indicator by distinguishing between employers, foremen, craftsmen, clerks and employees with middle and high responsibilities, from people with no responsibilities (middle/high responsibility = 1).

To measure the effect of competition, it is key to consider not only those who already have a high position, but also – and perhaps more importantly – those who seek to improve their position. Indeed, such upwardly mobile respondents may be even more sensitive to perceived dangers on the job market. I operationalized this variable with a question, asking respondents whether or not they would like to improve their job position (yes = 1). Finally, I thought it would be especially interesting to see whether those who already have a good position, and who would still like to improve it, are particularly germanophobic. To investigate this idea, I allowed ‘job position’ and ‘desire for job improvement’ to interact in my model. I also controlled for sex (men = 1) and age.

Analyzing attitudes towards a specific group of outsiders bears the danger of measuring attitudes towards out-groups in general. It might very well be that those who dislike Germans have prejudices against all immigrants. The question is thus whether prejudice reflects dislike of a particular group of migrants, or of minorities in general (see Ray and Lovejoy 1986; Duckitt and Mphuthing 1992; Sniderman and Haagendorn 2007: 53–62; Helbling 2010). With this in mind, I tested whether or not my model has the same impact on attitudes towards immigrants from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, who at present constitute another rapidly increasing and most controversial immigration group in Switzerland. Since those immigrants correspond much more closely with the common image of poor and bably educated immigrants, it will be particularly interesting to see whether or not the independent variables have the same impact on both indicators.

The results of my investigation are reported in Table 1. Since a lot of cases are dropped when I include the indicators for ‘job position’ and especially ‘job improvement’⁸ I ran separate models to ensure that both the full and the restricted samples were part of the same population. As we will see, there were no big differences between the two samples.

As we begin our analysis, let us first consider the interrelationship between the independent variables and the attitudes towards people from the countries of the former Yugoslavia (Model 4). The results are largely consistent with the dominant arguments in the literature: Those who fear that Swiss traditions are in danger dislike this group of immigrants significantly more than others. As expected, education yields a negative impact: better-educated people evidence fewer negative prejudices towards immigrants from the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The effect of education is, however, much lower than the impact of cultural threat perception. On the other hand, indicators measuring job position and the intention to improve one's position have no impact. Sex and age demonstrate no influence, either.

With this established, we may now turn our attention to attitudes towards Germans (Model 2). As we can see, people who fear that Swiss cultural characteristics are in danger are also more germanophobic than others. The coefficients are also significant; however, they are less than a third that for attitudes towards ex-Yugoslavians. It appears that cultural threat is triggered not only by immigrants who are objectively very different, culturally speaking, but also by groups that (at first) appear very similar. Indeed, the perceived characteristic differences between Swiss-Germans and Germans that other studies have heretofore revealed (Frei et al. 1983: 51; Schläpfer et al. 1991: 151–4) prove to bring about negative attitudes towards Germans here.

The socio-structural variables demonstrate a different pattern of impact factors when it comes to Germans and ex-Yugoslavians. Contrary to what most studies on prejudice and xenophobia have found, highly educated people do not appear to have less hostile attitudes towards Germans than less educated persons. Compared to the effects of education on attitudes towards ex-Yugoslavians, the influence of education on attitudes towards Germans is almost non-existent and far from a significant level. As for the matter of job positions, I found that contrary to my expectation, people who hold high positions do not have different attitudes towards Germans compared to people holding low positions. However, the desire to improve one's position significantly increases negative feelings towards Germans. The effect is a little bit higher than the influence of cultural threat perception, but less significant. It appears that those who already have good jobs and are satisfied with their work are not afraid of well-educated immigrants taking their jobs. However, those who still have to compete for well-paid jobs are more germanophobic than others. In this regard, it is also interesting to observe that older people are less germanophobic than younger people. As I have noted, the respondents surveyed were between 19 and 66 years old. This means that the younger people in our sample are fresh on the job market and are about to start their careers, whereas older respondents are more likely to have already reached their desired job positions. As much as people in high positions are no longer afraid of foreign competitors, older people would appear to be similarly less afraid, and thus less germanophobic.

This study has allowed me to shed new light on the relationships between various national groups, and to elaborate on a relatively unexplored area in the enormous literature on xenophobia and prejudice. Most often, it is clear, dominant Western groups’ attitudes towards immigrants from culturally distant regions (and low social classes) lie at the centre of this debate. The relationships between culturally and socially similar groups are popularly considered unproblematic.

However, the findings of this study contradict two common assumptions in the research field of xenophobia and prejudice – namely, the assumptions that only groups from culturally very distant regions increase xenophobic attitudes, and that better-educated and better socially integrated persons have fewer negative prejudices against out-groups than their less educated counterparts. Figure 2 demonstrates that, overall, Western Europeans are indeed much more readily accepted by the Swiss population than immigrants from the Balkans and regions outside Europe. However, Germans are among the most disliked migratory ethnicities when compared to immigrants from other Western Europeans.

One question this raises, of course, is how we may measure cultural distances. While we lack the space to discuss this question in detail here, my research has emphasized that culture consists of much more than aspects that so often come to mind – that is to say language, skin color and the like. Our data suggests that the construction of ‘the other’ is the result of a very complex process indeed. It is much more important to look at how out-groups are conceived, and what is socially and culturally acceptable in an in-group, than to rely on seemingly objective considerations. Because of this, I have grown increasingly interested in whether or not German cultural achievements demonstrate a durable negative impact in Switzerland, and whether they have sparked sentiments of inferiority. It has been highly interesting to find that German immigrants are indeed believed to endanger Swiss cultural characteristics, though at a lower level than immigrants from the Balkans.

Socioeconomic factors have proven relevant as well. Studies on xenophobia often suggest that well-educated people appear to be less prejudiced against immigrants (see Hello et al. 2006). In my study, however, I found that education does not improve Swiss peoples’ attitudes towards Germans. At the same time, it is clear that people who seek to improve their job positions are significantly more germanophobic than those who are satisfied with their current job situation, and more germanophobic than those who are already established in their careers. It appears that, as much as low-skilled workers fear that poorly educated immigrants will take their jobs, well-educated Swiss people consider German immigrants to be competitors on the job market. This confirms the findings of Hello et al. (2006), who found that the absence of a perceived threat explains why education is normally negatively correlated with xenophobia. As long as immigration groups consist of low-skilled workers that pose no threat, well-educated people will likely have no negative attitudes towards them. This changes, however, when immigrants compete with the dominant group at a more active level.

Of course, this study provides only limited evidence of why some Swiss-Germans dislike Germans. To measure the impact of the most recent immigration wave, more recent data will be necessary. Such data would allow us to determine the extent to which germanophobia has increased, and whether or not the power of our various explanatory variables has increased as well. Moreover, qualitative and historical studies will be necessary to complement the findings of this paper and to put our results into a broader context. Qualitative interviews or focus groups would provide some deeper knowledge of how negative stereotypes towards Germans emerge. Among other pertinent concerns, it is also important to ask: What are the situations and events that trigger such attitudes? What general impressions do Swiss-Germans have of Germans, and what specific characteristics do they ascribe to them? A more nuanced historical investigation would enable us to better understand the development of attitudes towards Germans. As I have already mentioned, immigration from Germany was a significant factor at the beginning of the last century; it would serve us well to ask if German immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century led to controversies similar to those we see now.

I like to thank Jörg Stolz for providing the dataset, Pascal Sciarini and Elmar Schlüter for useful comments and Lisa Anders for her research assistance. This paper also benefited from fruitful (and sometimes emotionally laden) discussions with Charlotte Reinisch on Swiss-German/German relationships.

Marc Helbling is a senior researcher at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). His research fields include immigration and citizenship politics, nationalism, xenophobia/islamophobia, the accomodation of Islam, right-wing populism and public policy analysis.