A quiet globalisation of immigration? The interplay between international trade rules and national immigration policies in Switzerland and Germany

Globalisation has increased the pressure on states to open up their economies, including for immigration. In this context, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and preferential trade agreements (PTAs) include binding commitments on the immigration of employees of multinational companies, service providers and other types of labour migrants. The implementation of these commitments, however, rests on national immigration policies, where concerns for national sovereignty and popular pressure to restrict immigration loom large. Whereas previous literature largely agrees that states have only agreed to very limited liberalisation of immigration through trade agreements, the negotiations of the GATS happened at a time of dynamic developments in immigration policies and policy rationales. This paper studies the relationship between trade agreements and national immigration policies and asks how trade rationales have shaped national immigration systems. The analysis is based on a comparative case study of Switzerland and Germany. Analysing migration laws and regulations and their change before, during and after the GATS negotiations, I find that rather than merely uploading their national regulations to the international level in the GATS, Germany and Switzerland have adapted national rules during the negotiations. Whereas in Germany, this was followed by a gradual liberalisation of labour immigration policies over the following decades, the Swiss labour immigration policies have become more selective, with important exceptions for multinational companies and service providers. The findings imply that in a restrictive immigration system, special interests, e. g. of multinational companies, play a disproportionate role in national immigration regimes both in policy and practice. This “quiet globalization” of immigration rules and trade exceptionalism continue through the more recent period of contested globalization.