Switzerland has one of the highest percentages of non-citizen (or “foreign national”) residents in the world, which by 2018 numbered more than two million people, or nearly 25 percent of the entire population.[1] Reasons for this high percentage are the country’s high immigration rates as well as challenges in acquiring citizenship, which is not automatically granted to people born in Switzerland. The Swiss Federal Statistical Office reported in 2016 that nearly 400,000 foreign nationals were born in Switzerland, which made up about 20 percent of the country’s non-citizen population.[2] What is more, nearly half of Switzerland’s non-citizen residents have lived at least 10 years in the country.[3]

Immigration and asylum policies are the subject of heated political debates in the country and have also received international scrutiny. For instance, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), whose headquarters are located in Geneva, described the country’s 2005 asylum law as “one of the strictest pieces of legislation in Europe.”[4] More recently, in 2018, Switzerland opted not to join 160 other countries in adopting the non-binding Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, even though the country had played an important role crafting the compact.[5] 

Switzerland’s detention policies have been impacted by these national debates. However, an equally important influence is the fact that “coercive measures,” as detention procedures are called in Swiss law, are applied at the local (or cantonal) level rather than at the federal level, a system similar to Germany’s. This can create varying degrees of enforcement between different parts of Switzerland. It also may be an important reason that Switzerland, unlike nearly all other countries in Europe, continues to make widespread use of prisons for immigration detention purposes. Of the more than 30 dozen detention sites used for applying coercive measures in Switzerland, the Global Detention Project has identified only five that are specialised immigration facilities.

In 2018, there were reportedly 3,284 total detention orders, the majority of which concerned “detention pending deportation” (Article 76 FNA), with 1,895 orders (57.7 percent), followed by Dublin detention (Article 76a FNA) with 1,213 orders (i.e. 36.9 percent).[6] The numbers of people placed in detention have steadily decreased during the past decade, down from a high of 7,540 in 2011.[7] In 2018, the top nationalities of detainees were, by order of importance, Algeria, Nigeria, Albania, Morocco, and Kosovo.[8] 

For more information, see Global Immigration Detention Observatory, “Switzerland Immigration Detention Data Profile.”

[1] Federal Statistical Office, “Foreign population” (website), https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/population/migration-integration/foreign.html

[2] O. Lavoustet, “La Suisse Dépasse les 8,5 Millions d’Habitants,” Le Temps, 9 April 2019, https://www.letemps.ch/suisse/suisse-depasse-85-millions-dhabitants; D. Q. Nguyen, “Qui Sont ces 25% d’Etrangers en Suisse?” Swissinfo, 10 November 2017, https://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/societe/s%C3%A9rie-migration-partie-1-_deux-millions-d-%C3%A9trangers-en-suisse-mais-qui-sont-ils/42409190

[3] Swissinfo, "Defining the 25% foreign population in Switzerland,” 19 November 2017, https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/migration-series-part-1-_who-are-the-25-foreign-population-in-switzerland/42412156

[4] UNHCR, “Switzerland: UNHCR Deeply Regrets Adoption of New Asylum Law,” 18 March 2005, https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2005/3/423ab71a25/switzerland-unhcr-deeply-regrets-adoption-new-asylum-law.html

[5] Swissinfo, "Why do we need the Global Compact for Migration?” 11 December 2019, https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/explainer_why-do-we-need-the-global-compact-for-migration-/44572400

[6] State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), “Datenerhebung Zwangsmassnahmen (DAZ) ganze Schweiz 2018,” 18 January 2019, provided to the GDP by Philippe Feliser (SEM), Email exchange with Agnese Zucca (GDP), 7 June 2019.

[7] Federal Office for Migration (P. Feliser), Responses to Global Detention Project/Access Info Questionnaire, 9 and 24 October 2013.

[8] State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), “Datenerhebung Zwangsmassnahmen (DAZ) ganze Schweiz 2018,” 18 January 2019, provided to the GDP by Philippe Feliser (SEM), Email exchange with Agnese Zucca (GDP), 7 June 2019.