The challenge of low visibility: immigrant activism toward enfranchisement

Introduction

The literature on immigrant activism has identified strategies of visibility and invisibility. Sometimes becoming visible is an essential element of protest. As part of the DREAM Act movement in the United States, for example, undocumented youths publicly declared their undocumented status—thereby intentionally stepping out of invisibility despite the associated risks (Corrunker Citation2012; Galindo Citation2012). At other times, activists choose less visible strategies. Drawing on the case of Colombian migrants in Ecuador, Pugh (Citation2018, 990) shows that immigrant activists used closed-door meetings and relied on other civil society organisations as brokers to avoid a nativist backlash. These two examples reflect very different strategic choices by immigrant activists and their allies.

In this article, I discuss the challenges that low visibility activism poses for scholarship. Such strategies make the contributions of activists difficult to identify. Media coverage is unlikely to reflect behind-the-scenes involvement of immigrants and the public paper trail may also fall short. This makes it challenging to see whether immigrants were involved in a political process and, if they were, to judge the extent of their impact. I engage with sources that offer better insight into closed-door events, such as interviews with those directly involved and detailed archival material. Whenever such source material is unavailable, scholars need to be mindful that their conclusions about immigrant involvement in the political process are likely limited.

To make this argument, I focus on a reform that has been studied in many different contexts—immigrant enfranchisement (see Finn Citation2023; Altman, Huertas, and Sánchez Citation2023). While the literature frequently credits emigrants with an active role in efforts toward their right to vote, the same cannot be said of immigrants. I revisit Switzerland as one of the most widely studied cases of immigrant enfranchisement with the help of two subnational case studies—the cantons Geneva and Zurich. Not only were immigrants involved in various ways, but at certain points along the process their engagement was critical. Nonetheless, two factors reduced the visibility of immigrant involvement. First, in line with Pugh’s findings on Colombians in Ecuador, remaining out of sight was a strategic choice of immigrant activists. Second, institutional barriers made some more visible actions unavailable to those without formal citizenship. By comparing parliamentary debates with interview and archival evidence, I demonstrate that only the latter two types of sources provide glimpses into the contributions of immigrants.

Activism in the immigrant enfranchisement literature

When studying the role of immigrants in their own enfranchisement, it is necessary to disentangle two questions that have often been blurred. The first question is whether immigrants were actively involved. The implicit answer of much of the literature appears to be No. Immigrant activism is frequently not considered in works seeking to explain the extension of voting rights. This is particularly true for quantitative work (Earnest Citation2015; Gonnot Citation2021; Koukal, Schafer, and Eichenberger Citation2021; Stutzer and Slotwinski Citation2021). The rare quantitative studies that mention immigrant activism rely on crude proxies, such as the share of foreigners among the population (Kayran and Erdilmen Citation2021). Data on more meaningful proxies, such as the density of immigrant associations, are usually unavailable (see Earnest Citation2006, 252). Likewise, relying on prior in-depth case studies is difficult when many of them remain silent on immigrant involvement. Indeed, several case studies delving into the reasons for enfranchisement do not mention immigrant activism (Piccoli Citation2021; Triandafyllidou Citation2015; Veri Citation2019). In those cases, it is unclear whether this factor was never considered, or omitted because it was deemed irrelevant after consulting the evidence.

The second question is whether immigrant involvement is consequential for the outcome. Several scholars were on the lookout for immigrant involvement but concluded that it did not play much of a role. Based on a detailed study of parliamentary debates in Portugal and Germany, Pedroza (Citation2019, 159) writes:

Similarly, Jacobs studied immigrant enfranchisement in the Netherlands and Belgium—also drawing strongly on parliamentary debates. For the Netherlands, he writes that ‘it is worth underlining that the support for enfranchisement by left-wing parties is not the result of a suffragist movement among foreign residents themselves—which hardly existed in the Netherlands—but is instead related to pressure from self-appointed advocates’ (Citation1998, 355). For Belgium, despite writing that ‘[i]mmigrant associations were able to pressure leftist politicians at certain stages’ (Citation1999, 659), Jacobs concludes ‘that neither ethnic minority groups nor the antiracist movement exerted any real direct influence on the debate over enfranchisement’ (660). As for Sweden, Hammar (Citation1990, 176) observes that ‘the immigrants themselves and their associations have not played a decisive role […] the real spokesmen for voting rights were a number of well-placed politicians and experts with a special interest in immigrants and immigration policy.’ Many of these assessments of immigrant involvement appear to be based on their visibility in public debate. It is unclear how deeply less visible and less direct forms of impact were investigated.

While it is fair to assess the causal impact of immigrant involvement, the question arises to what extent the to-be-enfranchised of the past—to whom immigrants are compared—shaped enfranchisement outcomes. The struggle by poorer classes for the right to vote has become the measuring stick for other demographics. In his article, ‘Conquered or Granted?’, Przeworski (Citation2009) concludes that while ‘the poorer classes fought their way into the representative institutions’ (291), women were granted the right to vote by strategizing parties. This argument overlooks two key elements. First, even the poorer classes often gained the franchise as a result of partisan strategies. Collier (Citation1999) finds that the credit that the working classes receive for the introduction of manhood suffrage is often overstated and that working classes had ‘quite different degrees of influence’ across historical cases (185–186). Second, partisan strategies can be shaped by those who are disenfranchised. Teele (Citation2018), for example, elaborates on how suffragists leveraged the incentives of political parties in efforts toward the right to vote for women. The distinction between conquered and granted then begins to break down when accounting for subtler forms of political influence.

There are exceptions in the literature on extending immigrant electoral rights that highlight immigrant activism. In his account of enfranchisement attempts in Japan, Day (Citation2009) documents the efforts of immigrants as part of the Zainichito movement. This example also underlines that the share of foreigners—which is low in Japan—is not a reliable proxy for immigrant activism. Turning to the United States, Hayduk and Coll (Citation2018) likewise describe the involvement of immigrants in efforts toward the right to vote. Beyond that, the literature focusing on immigrant political participation accounted for the actions of immigrants for the right to vote as one part of a bigger picture (examples include Bolzman and Fibbi Citation1991; Hürlimann and Aratnam Citation2004; Ireland Citation1994; Ricciardi and Cattacin Citation2019). However, since the focus of these latter works was not on voting rights, none of them analysed the role of immigrants in enfranchisement episodes from start to finish, nor did they go beyond capturing the most visible forms of involvement.

Research design

An exploratory case study drawing on diverse sources can shed light on the presence and impact of immigrant activists in enfranchisement efforts. In the literature on immigrant enfranchisement, Switzerland is a common case due to its subnational variation. Existing works seeking to explain the introduction of immigrant voting rights have either been quantitative analyses (Gonnot Citation2021; Koukal, Schafer, and Eichenberger Citation2021; Stutzer and Slotwinski Citation2021) or qualitative analyses (Piccoli Citation2021; Veri Citation2019). The consistent omission of immigrant activism from these works makes Switzerland appear as a ‘least likely’ case for immigrant involvement.

I prioritise depth over breadth by concentrating on two of the twenty-six cantons. Table 1 compares the cantons Geneva and Zurich, and captures variation in terms of culture, political make-up, as well as immigrant voting rights. Since reform efforts span decades, I analyse discrete episodes that each mark an advanced decision moment on whether to extend the franchise. As Capoccia and Ziblatt (Citation2010, 935) argue, episode analysis can unearth empirical regularities that would be missed when focusing on only the final moment of institutional reform. For each episode, I address whether immigrants actively participated and whether this involvement was consequential.

An analysis of immigrant activism hinges on its operationalisation. A straightforward criterion would be to examine the actions of self-declared immigrant associations, such as an Italian association in Switzerland. Such operationalisation fails to account for immigrants acting through existing organisations. For example, immigrants quickly gained a role within many unions; in the case of the influential German IG Metall, there were elected immigrant representatives even before this was legally possible.Footnote¹ This is relevant because unions often had an active role in the fight for immigrant voting rights. For Belgium, Jacobs and Swyngedouw (Citation2002) observe that ‘[i]t is worth stressing that the support for local enfranchisement by left-wing politicians was […] launched as an issue by the trade unions in the 1970s, only later to be joined by immigrant associations’ (334). This raises the question as to what extent unions’ calls for enfranchisement can be linked to internal efforts of immigrant members. This type of internal activism is challenging to observe.Footnote²

Another potential criterion is that the key actors should be from the circle of the to-be-enfranchised, in other words, non-citizen residents. That said, formal citizenship can facilitate the fight for voting rights; by running for office, activists gain improved access to political institutions. Accordingly, I chose the term immigrant over non-citizen resident (for a conceptual discussion, see Umpierrez de Reguero, Finn, and Peltoniemi Citation2023). In the Swiss case studies covered here, the concept of immigrant activism therefore also captures the involvement of two categories that do not always fall under the term immigrant—naturalised citizens as well as the second and third generation. On the one hand, the concept of immigrant activism should not be stretched so far as to be almost all-encompassing. On the other hand, reducing immigrant activism to non-citizen residents being active as part of immigrant associations discards important strategies from the activism toolbox. My approach is a compromise. In my analysis, I include immigrant associations, organisations consisting of immigrants and Swiss citizens, as well as the political actions of naturalised citizens who stress their immigrant origin—while always specifying the type of actor in my case studies.

Because actors may face incentives to underrepresent or overrepresent immigrant activism, it is important to consult evidence from different sources and evidence that was not directed at the public. The available evidence varies more over time, rather than across the two cantons. For episodes up until the early 2000s, I rely mostly on archival material from civil society organisations, political parties, state institutions, and newspapers. Most individuals involved in the 1980s and 1990s were no longer available for interviews. The opposite applies to later episodes. Altogether, I draw on collections from six archives and five cantonal party headquarters. The appendix provides an overview of the types of actors interviewed and the archival collections consulted. The episodes are not discussed in equal depth, partly because the first episodes lay the groundwork, and partly because of scarce evidence for later episodes.

Immigrant enfranchisement in Switzerland

Whether immigrants have the right to vote varies across cantons, and sometimes even across municipalities within a canton. Five cantons have introduced local electoral rights (Fribourg, Geneva, Jura, Neuchâtel, Vaud); three have permitted their municipalities to introduce local electoral rights (Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Basel-City, Grisons); and two have granted cantonal electoral rights (Jura, Neuchâtel). In Switzerland, such constitutional changes must be approved directly by the electorate. There are thus two institutional pathways to achieve enfranchisement. It can be the result of a single-issue proposal in a popular vote, whereby a majority of voters has to approve the reform, or it can be introduced together with the passage of a new cantonal constitution. In the latter pathway, the electorate votes on immigrant voting rights as part of a reform package, rather than in isolation. The following case studies provide insight into both pathways.

Though there is a growing literature on immigrant enfranchisement in Switzerland, it has made no mention of the role that immigrants play in the process. One reason for this is that much of the work on Switzerland looks exclusively at the last stage in the process—by asking what factors shape whether immigrant voting rights gain majority support at the ballot box (Gonnot Citation2021; Koukal, Schafer, and Eichenberger Citation2021; Piccoli Citation2021; Veri Citation2019). While important, this focus overlooks all the prior pieces that fell into place to attempt enfranchisement. The failure to collect sufficient signatures in the canton of Ticino in the early 1990s is just one of several examples of popular votes that never came to be (Cueni and Fleury Citation1994, 15). Likewise, in the negotiations of new cantonal constitutions, immigrant voting rights were almost always debated—but they made it into the final text in only a few cases. Since immigrants have limited opportunities to directly shape the outcome of a popular vote or a new cantonal constitution, overlooking earlier stages in the process hides their contribution. While I also do not look at attempts that failed at an early stage, I do look at the early stages of advanced attempts—at the moments when it was not yet clear whether the reform would eventually appear on the ballot or in the constitutional draft.

From the 1950s to the early 1970s, Switzerland recruited mostly Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese as part of its ‘guest worker’ policy. While most of them eventually returned, some stays that were meant to be temporary turned permanent. Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with the increasing share of foreigners grew on the Swiss side. In 1970, spearheaded by the politician James Schwarzenbach, the first popular referendum on over-foreignisation (Überfremdung) edged close to gaining a majority. If it had been accepted, the share of foreigners would have been capped and many who had found a home in Switzerland would have had to leave. In subsequent years, similar popular votes followed, and immigration became a highly politicised topic. All the while, those without Swiss citizenship could not partake in the democratic process. Due to the strict naturalisation regime at the time, the first generation was soon joined by the second and third generation at the margin of the demos. Switzerland has since relaxed its naturalisation requirements, but it remains among the more restrictive countries in Europe.

In the late 1970s, two influential migrant associations launched a petition for democratic participation. The Federazione Colonie Libere Italiane in Svizzera (FCLIS) is an Italian migrant organisation that was officially non-partisan but unofficially understood to be on the left and communist side (Schmitter Citation1980, 188). At the time, it was arguably the most influential migrant organisation in Switzerland with a self-reported membership count of 10,000.Footnote³ The FCLIS still exists today in a reduced form. Its Spanish counterpart is the Asociación de Trabajadores Españoles Emigrantes en Suiza (ATEES), which was founded in the late 1960s and has mostly disappeared. From 1978 to 1981, these two organisations jointly launched a petition in fifteen cantons, calling for cantonal and local voting rights for immigrants as well as for institutions that involve immigrants in decisions that affect them. It gathered just short of 100,000 signatures (Grossi Citation1990, 6).

Although no canton introduced immigrant voting rights in the following years, it would be wrong to consider the petition a failure. In Geneva, it reached 13,000 signatures. While the Social Democrats in Geneva (PS) had already included the call for immigrant voting rights in their 1977 manifesto, they had acted little on this point. This changed with the petition. As becomes evident from the meeting minutes of the cantonal party leadership, immigrant organisations launched this petition in Geneva.Footnote⁴ The party was, somewhat hesitantly, reacting to it. The same applies to its counterpart in Zurich; although the cantonal leadership of the Social Democrats (SP) voted unanimously in favour of the petition, the meeting minutes note ‘concerns.’Footnote⁵ In Geneva, the petition eventually contributed to the creation of the Communauté de Travail pour l’Accueil et l’Intégration des Étrangers in 1984. This working group was meant to be a bridge between state institutions, social partners, and immigrant organisations; eight of its 23 members were designated to be representatives of the immigrant community. One demand of the petition—institutionalised representation in matters that affect immigrants—was thus partially met in Geneva. These petitions may not have been the first time that immigrants called for the right to vote, but no previous effort had garnered this much support and spread to as many parts of the country. The following cases delve into efforts that reached even more advanced stages.

Explaining the low visibility of immigrant activism

In these case studies, the low visibility of immigrant activism can be attributed to two main factors. First, institutional barriers limit immigrants’ access to common arenas of politics—especially during earlier episodes. Since many studies on this topic rely on parliamentary debates, it is worth noting that non-citizen residents generally cannot participate in them. But there are also less obvious obstacles that reduced the visibility of immigrant contributions. In Zurich, the president of the FCLIS had accompanied the first initiative from its beginning in Uster. The president's name, however, could not appear on the official initiative committee nor among the signatories.Footnote²⁹ As a result, the official paper trail of the initiative hides the extent of this involvement.

Swiss law had long tried to depoliticise immigrants. From 1948 to 1998, Switzerland barred foreigners without permanent residence permits from speaking about politics at public gatherings without acquiring prior permission from the respective cantonal government.Footnote³⁰ Over time, this rule was handled more liberally but a sense of legal uncertainty for immigrants without permanent residence remained. A more drastic example is that Switzerland did not allow foreigners to cast votes for elections in their origin countries from within Switzerland. In other words, Switzerland had not only excluded them as immigrants from the democratic process where they lived but also prohibited them to participate as emigrants in the democratic process of their origin countries (unless they left Swiss territory to vote). Only in 1989 did Switzerland legalise postal voting for external elections, then in 1993 they lifted the ban on in-person voting at consulates.

Beyond being legacies of World War II, these legal obstacles demonstrate an aversion to immigrant involvement by parts of the Swiss population. In Geneva, a member of the public submitted a written question to the Grand Conseil.Footnote³¹ The text describes how, on 16 January 1991, two Spanish nationals were collecting signatures for the initiative on immigrant voting rights in front of the hospital. The question was whether immigrants have the right to collect signatures and whether the signatures collected would be valid. While the Conseil d’État responded that immigrants have this right, the fact that such a question was submitted is telling. Furthermore, this was not an isolated incident. After repeated conflicts, in 1986 the City of Zurich banned anyone without voting rights from collecting signatures for popular initiatives in public.Footnote³² The ban was heavily criticised and lifted after a few months.

Such aversion to politically active immigrants explains why activists sometimes strategically tone down their visible involvement. In the context of recurring over-foreignisation initiatives, immigrants learned to ‘become as inconspicuous as possible’ (Schmitter Citation1980, 191). This also emerges in the case studies. In a preparatory meeting for the first popular initiative in Zurich, a representative of a prominent immigrant association is quoted: ‘What can immigrant associations who want to participate in local festivals do? How can they raise awareness for their demand without this being seen as a provocation (paper napkins, posters, flyers)?’Footnote³³ When planning the campaign for the final weeks before the 1993 vote, the group faced similar considerations. The minutes urge:

Low visibility engagement was also chosen in Geneva. Meeting minutes detail where the initiative committee planned the campaign for the second referendum. The committee agreed that ‘changing the perception of non-Swiss people is the key to the problem.’ Accordingly, the committee decided to use the word resident instead of foreigner.Footnote³⁵ Someone suggested giving immigrants cards to give to their Swiss neighbours, colleagues, and friends to encourage them to vote in favour. This idea was quickly dismissed: ‘we must not show an image of foreigners who claim rights as a demand, but still mark their presence in the city.’Footnote³⁶ The need to not appear too demanding is also reflected in an article on the first Geneva initiative in a party newspaper. The author emphasised the difference to the canton of Neuchâtel where, ‘a petition signed mostly by immigrants may have appeared as an imposition, [while] Swiss citizens in liaison with immigrants are involved in Geneva.’Footnote³⁷

Evidence from the third episode in Zurich suggests that this strategy continued into the last decade. Since the initiative committee did not take meeting minutes, tracing strategic choices based on a written record is impossible; but the public communication of the committee is telling. The press release from just ten days before the election—the crunch time to convince and mobilise voters—lists six political parties and four unions among the supporters; immigrant associations are omitted.Footnote³⁸ The association Second@s Plus is also not mentioned in the text, despite having spearheaded the effort. Comparing this with two other statements released by the initiative committee suggests that this was not an oversight. The statementFootnote³⁹ released after the referendum as well as the statementFootnote⁴⁰ from months before both list the involvement of representatives of immigrant associations upfront.

Discussion

With the help of fine-grained case studies of two Swiss cantons, Geneva and Zurich, I show that immigrants were involved in efforts to extend the right to vote (summarised in Table 2). When a direct contribution is possible (in the form of signature collection, for example), immigrants can be crucial actors. This was apparent in Zurich, where the popular initiative would have failed at the signature collection stage, had it not been for immigrant associations. The direct democratic instrument of popular initiatives offers a favourable political opportunity structure for engaging in the political process—even for those who cannot vote or sign an initiative. From this perspective, Switzerland may be among the ‘most likely’ cases for impactful immigrant activism, despite legal restrictions and public aversion to immigrant political participation. Since there was evidence of immigrant involvement in enfranchisement efforts in two culturally as well as politically different parts of Switzerland, similar forms of activism likely took place in at least some other cantons. Where direct involvement is not possible, immigrants still find other ways to shape the political processes. They can set the agenda with the help of other actors who are already embedded into existing power structures—unions, parties, and other civil society organisations. Evidence of this form of alliance building with political parties was especially strong in the first Zurich and third Geneva episodes. A lack of visibility in public debate, therefore, does not always equate to a lack of action or impact.

Immigrants and their allies sometimes strategically toned down their involvement when faced with a critical public. A particularly telling example of this strategy emerged in Zurich—where the initiative committee deemed Swiss citizens to be more convincing advocates for enfranchisement. This advice may not have been unfounded. A recent survey experiment found that Japanese respondents were less likely to support enfranchisement when a Korean immigrant—part of the most salient immigrant group in Japan—advocated for it (Igarashi and Ono Citation2022). In three of the six Swiss episodes, there was evidence of explicit considerations of the visibility of immigrant activism. In the third Zurich episode, this evidence emerges implicitly from the press releases. The only episode where the evidence suggests that this strategy was not applied among the core group of campaigners was the first episode in Geneva; for the second episode in Zurich, there is insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion on the strategy.

The strategic choice to de-emphasise immigrant involvement and immigration echoes previous research, beyond Switzerland. On the Belgian case, Jacobs (Citation1999, 659) writes that, ‘leftist migrant associations were moved to engage only in low-profile lobbying and not to instigate public actions like demonstrations.’ In Germany, Pedroza (Citation2019, 157) documents that experts had advised supporters of enfranchisement to use a moderate framing and steer clear of connecting the issue to immigration. While the latter is not the same as reducing the visibility of immigrant involvement, the advice points in the same direction. Lastly, going beyond the politics of enfranchisement, evidence of this low visibility strategy has also emerged in other areas of immigrant activism. Pugh (Citation2021, 41–48) introduces the concept of the invisibility bargain—an unspoken understanding that includes the expectation that immigrants remain politically invisible in their residence countries. Violating this expectation risks backlash. Accordingly, Pugh (Citation2018, 983) found that immigrants turned to NGOs as brokers and as a ‘political cover’ to pursue their goals.

Yet immigrant activists do not always choose low visibility. In the first episode in Geneva, I found no evidence of such a strategy. Likewise, recent research on enfranchisement activism highlights projects that explicitly seek to make immigrants visible as political actors. Sontag, Herzog, and Lässer (Citation2022) studied pro-enfranchisement organisations that included non-citizen residents among their members in three different cities, including Basel in Switzerland. Among other projects, they documented migrant parliamentary sessions as well as alternative votes in which the disenfranchised could cast ballots. But even when immigrant activists choose to be more visible, less visible forms of activism may still occur in the background.

Methodological challenges to the study of immigrant activism

Low visibility activism poses a methodological challenge for those studying political processes. Many case studies on enfranchisement have mainly relied on parliamentary debates (Jacobs Citation1998, Citation1999; Pedroza Citation2019; Piccoli Citation2021; Triandafyllidou Citation2015). Low visibility, however, makes it less likely that such sources reflect immigrant activism. To test whether this applies in the cases studied here, I reviewed the transcripts of the relevant parliamentary debates from Zurich and Geneva. Specifically, I chose the parliamentary debates from the first episodes when immigrant involvement mainly came in the shape of immigrant associations—the most straightforward operationalisation of immigrant activism. Both debates took place ahead of the popular votes and covered questions of what voting recommendation to issue and whether a counterproposal should be put forward.

The debate in the Kantonsrat in Zurich happened on 19 April 1993, with an official transcript of 22 single-spaced pages.Footnote⁴¹ Not once is there any mention of immigrant associations launching the local petitions, collecting signatures for the initiative, organising as well as speaking at internal and public events, or being part of the campaign planning and management.

The debate in the Grand Conseil in Geneva on 12 March 1993 has an official transcript of 26 single-spaced pages.Footnote⁴² Only one of the many forms of involvement by immigrant associations was mentioned, once. A representative of the Christian Democrats noted that the ‘commission [on political rights] had had several auditions, and notably, the representatives of the Italians in Geneva said that the right to vote and be elected to the labour court [Tribunal des prud'hommes] would already be an important step for them.’ In other words, this politician used immigrant associations to make the case against municipal and cantonal voting rights by saying that electoral rights for the labour court would suffice—a distortion that omits that these same immigrant associations had been campaigning for municipal and cantonal voting rights. While the minutes of the relevant sub-committees recorded at least some immigrant activism, these are only accessible as paper copies in the cantonal archives—with prior clearance. This raises the question of whether previous case studies may have failed to consider or dismissed immigrant activism due to their strong reliance on parliamentary debates.

While it is beyond the scope of this article to assess the evidence for additional cases, I cast a cursory glance at some German material, as a rough plausibility test. As a reminder, Pedroza (Citation2019, 159) concluded for the German and Portuguese cases that ‘it is not the to-be-enfranchised who mobilized but rather the so-called self-appointed advocates.’ To gather an initial sense of whether this conclusion may be a product of the type of sources consulted, I looked for archival evidence on the German case using desk research. What is now the Dokumentationszentrum und Museum über die Migration in Deutschland (DOMiD) started in a garage that functioned as an archive for collections of immigrant associations. While only a fraction of the material has been catalogued, the registerFootnote⁴³ of recently added material shows that immigrants were actively involved in the fight for the franchise in Germany. For example, a collection provided by Bülent T. covers the activities of Turkish immigrant associations in the 1970s and 1980s from the Ruhr area and the city of Gelsenkirchen. Among its notable documents are (1) a joint letter by various organisations addressed to Pope John Paul II, asking him to get involved in the fight for immigrant voting rights, (2) various letters about local voting rights addressed to representatives of political parties in Germany, (3) templates for newsletters and flyers on immigrant voting rights, and (4) the minutes of the constitutive meeting of a co-founded committee on immigrant voting rights.Footnote⁴⁴ These are just some of the documents that are flagged as mentioning immigrant voting rights in the register, and they are drawn from just one collection. These sources offer a glimpse into the fact that immigrant associations tried to influence and work with political parties and other powerful actors. One could also look beyond the activism of immigrant associations and study the involvement of immigrants in German organisations, especially unions, in relation to voting rights. Overall, this catalogue search was just an initial plausibility test. Reaching a conclusion on the role of immigrants in enfranchisement efforts in Germany—or in even one Land—would require consulting a variety of detailed sources.

It is sometimes impossible to draw on fine-grained evidence for an entire country. This is a challenge that I also faced in the cases covered here. The most useful sources for detecting immigrant activism were internal minutes of the campaign committees and parties. Crucially, these sources were not available for the second and third Zurich episodes. This makes it difficult to assess whether immigrant activism decreased there over time or whether it was just not as easy to detect due to data issues. For even earlier enfranchisement episodes, archival evidence is paramount. A lack of (access to) relevant archival material limits the extent to which immigrant contributions can be unearthed for past episodes. Issues may also arise when studying more recent years. For the third Zurich episode, much material vanished when old email accounts and websites were discontinued. By applying methods capable of picking up on low visibility actions, scholars can ensure that their conclusions on the involvement and impact of immigrants are not a consequence of methodological choices. Where such analysis is not feasible due to missing data, scholars should be aware that their ability to judge the extent and impact of immigrant involvement is limited.

Conclusion

Immigrant activism is not always publicly visible. In the cases covered here, I find two main reasons for the low visibility of immigrant activism. First, seeking not to rouse anti-immigrant sentiment, activists strategically chose to tone down the visibility of their involvement. Second, institutional barriers can make some more public forms of political participation unavailable to immigrants. Instead, immigrant activists find other ways to be involved—such as by speaking at closed-door meetings, building alliances with other actors, and doing the day-to-day background work of running a campaign.

This low visibility activism creates methodological challenges for scholarship as there are fewer traces of it. As a result, immigrant involvement can be overlooked or falsely dismissed as inconsequential. In this article, I highlighted the research challenges that low visibility activism poses by delving into the role of immigrants in efforts toward their own enfranchisement. I revisit one of the most studied cases in the immigrant enfranchisement literature—Switzerland—to document the involvement of immigrant activists in the cantons of Geneva and Zurich, by drawing on fine-grained evidence from archival and interview sources. Meanwhile, the publicly available record in the form of parliamentary debates did not reflect the extent and significance of immigrant involvement.

While the cases covered here are specific to enfranchisement, the implications of my argument apply more widely. When studying immigrants’ contributions to a political process, it is necessary to differentiate between two questions: first, whether immigrants were actively involved, and second, whether their involvement was consequential. It would be wrong to dismiss immigrant activism because it did not visibly impact the final outcome. A careful reconstruction may show that immigrant contributions were consequential at specific links in the chain of events—as exemplified in this analysis. Immigrant involvement, and its impact, will ultimately have to be determined on a case-by-case basis.

The kind of analysis that can detect low visibility forms of activism will not always be possible. This analysis was limited to two cantons as conducting such fine-grained research for an entire country is a mammoth task. In other situations, such an analysis will be impossible because the required information is not accessible—an archival record may be absent or interviewees no longer available. In the absence of such data, researchers should be cognisant of the challenges related to reaching conclusions about the involvement and impact of immigrant activists in political processes. This ensures that the political contributions of immigrants are not written out of the story.

Research ethics

This research received prior ethics clearance from the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. The relevant approval references are SSH_DPIR_C1A_19_034 and SSH_DPIR_C1A_21_010.