Data and Methods
Based on the analytic framework laid out so far, we will conduct our own survey in order to find out how broad the various forms of political involvement are practiced in Switzerland, which constellations of citizenship practices are more common than others, and whether the formal status of dual citizenship makes a difference. We follow this approach because the main goal of the project is to generate knowledge that can be generalized as much as possible for Switzerland where the status of dual citizenship is widespread and dramatically on the rise.
Unfortunately we cannot test our hypotheses with existing data sets. Many international as well as national surveys include political involvement but usually with respect to national citizenship practices only. In addition, regarding our independent variable, political membership, the datasets are not complete for our purposes: Neither the European Social Surveys nor the International Social Survey Programme raise double nationality. Nevertheless, these surveys can serve as a rich source in another respect: The established questions on political involvement, our dependent variable, used in these surveys will serve to elaborate the questionnaire for our own survey making it comparable to existing findings. Its added value however will be that we will assess citizenship status in an appropriate way as well as span the national, transnational and supra-national field of political involvement. Thus, while drawing on established wordings, we will concentrate on the so far neglected aspects of simultaneous political participation and identification in different fields of citizenship practices of dual citizens in Switzerland. The planned survey will be conducted by one of the leading Swiss survey institutes. Since one of our dependent variable is political participation including electoral participation we set the age minimum at 18 years (one person per household). Having two categories of dual citizens (naturalised and by birth) plus three control groups (naturalized mono-nationals, foreign residents and autochtonous citizens), and since for quantitative analyses we need around 100 respondents per category of each group, the effective sample should encompass not less than 1400 interviews. Regarding the response rate the experiences of the contacted survey institutes vary from 20 to 50% after a preparatory letter. Counting with an average of 35%, we plan to contact ca. 4000 persons. For this survey we will develop a structured questionnaire based on our hypotheses and assumed causal relationships (submitted to a pretest with several potential respondents). The quality of our questionnaire will furthermore be enhanced by first results from our qualitative part of the study which will strengthen the insights into dimensions, extent and effects of citizenship practices in different forms and fields. We are consciously planning a close interaction between both methodological parts of the study, also in the timing. Once the survey data is available we will apply rigorous multivariate statistical methods of descriptive and inference analyses. We will submit our theoretical assumptions on the different dimensions of political involvement to confirmatory factor and cluster analyses in order to explore and to classify these dimensions. Finally, the hypothesized causal relations will be tested by regression analyses, applying different models of explanation with augmenting degrees of complexity, mainly using multilevel analysis and structural equation modelling.
Participant selection/sampling method
In order to have sufficient numbers from one national background to control for it, we selected three countries of origin with very different migratory ties to Switzerland: Germany as, currently, the major source of new and mostly highly qualified migrants, Italy as the most important country of origin of former, less qualified ‘Gastarbeiter’, and Kosovo as one of the main sources of refugees and newer, less qualified labour migrants. By selecting these different nationalities (in addition to the Swiss), which make up the largest share of immigrants into Switzerland and which are often the focus of considerable media interest, we hoped to capture the range of possibilities while simultaneously facilitating comparative analyses.
Unfortunately, as in many other countries, dual citizenship is not documented in any official register in Switzerland. Our sampling procedure, however, was designed to reach enough dual citizens and relevant control groups, namely mono citizens and foreign residents with a permanent residence permit (Permit C). For quantitative analyses, we aimed at around 100 respondents per category for each group. In order to draw a randomly selected sample, we received generous support from two Swiss authorities: for contacts to naturalized and foreign immigrants from the selected three nationalities, addresses from the official register
