Article 45 and Article 49 provide for the free movement of workers and self-employed people, and the free movement of companies, throughout the EU. To overcome discrimination, legislation has been adopted addressing the rights of workers concerning matters such as tax, social advantages, languages, the mutual recognition of qualifications and requiring even private employers and social partners to treat all EU citizens equally. The case law goes even further than this, addressing all kinds of measures which discourage cross-border pursuit of an occupation, something which has had a great impact on professional football and its restrictive transfer rules. European company law has been similarly turned upside down by ruling in Centros that companies can choose their state of incorporation, a decision which led to the death of the real-seat theory of company law.

Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations presents an authoritative overview of the various continuities and changes in migration and globalization from the 1800s to the present day. Despite revolutionary changes in communication technologies, the growing accessibility of long-distance travel, and globalization across major economies, the rise of nation-states empowered immigration regulation and bureaucratic capacities for enforcement that curtailed migration. One major theme worldwide across the post-1800 centuries was the differentiation between “skilled” and “unskilled” workers, often considered through a racialized lens; it emerged as the primary divide between greater rights of immigration and citizenship for the former, and confinement to temporary or unauthorized migrant status for the latter. Through thirty-one chapters, this volume further evaluates the long global history of migration; and it shows that despite the increased disciplinary systems, the primacy of migration remains and continues to shape political, economic, and social landscapes around the world.

This chapter lays out the making of Swiss economic immigration policy from the late 1940s to the mid-2010s. It begins with the establishment of Switzerland’s guest worker regime with the signing of the Swiss-Italian recruitment treaty in 1948. The second case study traces a series of regulatory reforms over the course of the 1960s, culminating in the creation of the global ceiling system in 1970. The chapter’s third case study is the Three Circles Policy which sought to reconcile the diplomatic imperative of free movement of European workers with the populist calls for closure. The chapter’s final case study examines policy making in the 2000s as the Swiss government opted for a treaty-based approach to market integration, followed by the 2008 immigration act which codified the policy changes enacted through bilateral treaties and executive directives over the previous years. In 2014, Swiss voters adopted the Mass Immigration Initiative which presented policy makers with the impossible choice between legislating the people’s will or maintaining its bilateral treaties with the European Union.