‘For EU countries, Switzerland is an interesting laboratory’

Vincent Kaufmann, an EPFL researcher, has co-authored an essay on Switzerland's recent referendums on mobility and the free movement of people. These two votes should lead the European Union to rethink certain aspects of its founding documents. Vincent Kaufmann, a sociologist who specializes in mobility studies, decided to expand his usual focus on urban areas to include Switzerland and the European Union (EU). Kaufmann, who is also the head of EPFL's Urban Sociology Laboratory, teamed up with Spanish researcher Ander Audikana to write an essay on mobility and the free movement of people in the EU and in Switzerland. The authors' starting point was the 'Stop mass immigration" initiative, which was approved by voters on 9 February 2014. Their essay provides a Swiss perspective that people concerned about a borderless EU and its unintended consequences might do well to consider. Clive H. Church, researcher at the University of Kent, also draws an interesting parallel between Switzerland and post-Brexit UK in the book's preface.