Crisis in Switzerland?!

The topic “crisis” is being dealt with in a particular and multi-layered way in Switzerland. On the one hand, the statistic key data used to identify the crisis in South Europe, are less distinct in Switzerland than in other European countries: unemployment (3% in May 2013) and youth unemployment (6,2% in May 2013) indicate an existent as well as augmenting precarity, that has, however, been relatively low and stable. Due to the current economic growth (1,1% first quarter in 2013) economists are generally optimistic about the near national future.¹ Furthermore there is hardly any extensive political mobilization related to the topic “crisis” and a political debate about the subjectively perceived consequences of the crisis is missing. Symptomatic for this may be that the biggest Swiss trade union, UNIA, only dealt with the “crisis” at the end of the last decade, using the slogan “We don’t pay for your crisis” [original: “Wir bezahlen eure Krise nicht”]. Another indicator for the lack of awareness concerning the crisis in every day life is that a recent strike organized by the employees in the supermarket Spar against bad terms of employment, neither mentions nor relates to the crisis. Other, rather marginal, protests do make that connection though.  On the other hand the crisis and its effects are present within the domestic political and public debate: the expensive Swiss Franc, its currency rate that has been limited in order to protect the Swiss export economy, the UBS rescue by the Swiss government under emergency rule in 2008, the upcoming end of the bank secrecy and the international pressure on the Swiss state, the beginning debate about high salaries and bonuses or the fear of immigration. All of them are being negotiated in relation to the crisis.

In our mini study we set out to question how the crisis is being perceived and identified in Switzerland from different perspectives. Methodologically we are led by the assumption that the topic “crisis” itself has to be negotiated socially and that a specific kind of talking about the crisis creates a corresponding reality. They are “fragments of a discourse that pull behind them fragments of a reality, of which they themselves are part of “ [original in German: „Diskursfragemente, die die Fragmente einer Realität nach sich ziehen, deren sie ein Teil sind“.² The discourses that we get insights into through the interviews are being understood as constituting reality, while they refer to the social sense systems that they are spoken out of. This way the individual statements can be located in their social relations. Referring to Marx and Adorno, we also assume that the crisis has its roots in the contradictions of modern society.³ The latter thinks of the crisis as one that has been taking place permanently within the consciousness, since World War I.⁴ Similarly the authors Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt understand modernity as a situation of crisis that they define as a specific never-ending conflict.⁵ They are being arranged within “ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out”.⁶ What the specific focus on crisis is being set on, how crisis is being understood, what political project follows it, what problems are being elicited and so forth, is the result of discourses that deal with and handle the crisis. Crisis are therefore always concrete forms of crisis that take place within concrete negotiations. Which understandings of the crisis are relevant at one time therefore depends on those negotiations. Like Alex Demirović and Andrea Maihofer⁷ we assume that we are currently part of a multiple crisis [original: “Vielfachkrise”]: different lines of contradictions interlace and they shouldn’t be played off against one another within the debates. The different dynamics and phenomena of crisis are to be thought of as connected with one another within a relation that reproduces itself through contradictions and that go off within different crisis. Although different aspects may be emphasized, the different crisis can influence and strengthen one another. Society is thus constituted as a whole bundle of social power relations and contradictions. Within the framework of our mini study we try to include different aspects of perceiving and defining the crisis, without reducing them to single expressions of crisis. The aim is to give a general idea of the different discourses that are currently present in Switzerland.

This is why we ask different people with different backgrounds about “the crisis”, in order to include a wide range of different and also contrasting perspectives. We talk to people from political parties, unions, people from a (socio-)scientific context, activists from political movements and economists about “the crisis” and thereby retrieve different experiences and explanations. We ask if and in what form the crisis has arrived in Switzerland. Explicitly we inquire about a possible relation between nationalist and segregating discourses in the context of crisis, seeing for example in “Nationalism and exclusion” [original: “Nationalismus und Ausgrenzung”]⁸ that they appear within the current crisis. Nationalist and xenophobic tendencies in Switzerland have been proven through different popular votes. We assume that phenomena of crisis often nourish racist and nationalist discourses.

Taking into account the interviews that we conducted, we can conclude that “the crisis” mattered, that all interview partners could make some statements about it. At the same time they seemed insecure about the way in which they should answer, about how they should judge the current situation in Switzerland. Also the crisis is being talked about more from an analytical macro perspective than as a subjective experience. The domestic political examples from above are mentioned in the interviews, an economical crisis is being perceived as imported from the outside. While there is seemingly no crisis in Switzerland, the country is affected nevertheless, because it depends on the abroad. The assessment of ‘no crisis here‘ is often contrasted with a fear that the crisis simply hasn’t hit Switzerland yet and that ‘we’ are going to feel the extend of it in a few years. Others don’t see a current break but refer to a crisis that has been going on for a long time and could be described as an impact of neoliberalism. The crisis is frequently being perceived in the upcoming unemployment or the dealing with people at the margin of society (e.g. raising and more creative repression against immigrants, in particular asylum seekers). Many also take up an ideology critical perspective and complain that people don’t see the crisis, because their socio-economical situation is still too comfortable. While some fear that Switzerland and its institutions are in danger and hope for a return on traditional values (the crisis can be seen as a chance here), others hope that within this crisis some things begin to move – that callous power structures may begin to dissolve. While most discourses of crisis are centered around economical aspects, it is obvious that they are combined with other crisis like the social crisis in the labor market, crisis of democracy and the welfare state, crisis in the dealing with migration or the crisis concerning the city/countryside relation, or the nature/culture one. During the presentation in Berlin we want to focus on the crisis in the job market, in the finance and banking sector and on a crisis of the “Swiss identity”.