Sense of threat

The sense of threat people may experience facing foreign nationals refers to the fears of the population and expresses a negative attitude towards them. The threat index captures the existence or absence of this feeling.

The average value of the index measuring the sense of threat with regard to the presence of foreigners in Switzerland is 1.9 in 2022, on a scale from 1 (absence of this feeling) to 4 (existence of this feeling). The fact that the average value of the index is close to 2 over the observation period indicates that the feeling is rather absent than present.

Evolution

The average value of the index has decreased between 2016 and 2022.

Method

The index is a synthetic measure of a given concept (sense of threat). It is based on several negative statements about foreigners (see codebook questions thre_fore_01, thre_fore_02 and thre_fore_03). According to the degree of agreement of the respondents with these statements on a scale from 1 to 4, an individual average value per concept is calculated. This average value lies between 1 and 4, with 1 expressing a positive attitude and 4 a negative attitude towards foreigners. The overall index value is the average of the individual average values and is thus the mean of the individual attitudes towards this concept.

Used to construct the index measuring the sense of threat, the results below show to what extent the population feels threatened by foreign or Swiss nationals and in which context this feeling is particularly strong.

Prevalence: The proportion of the population that feels threatened is relatively low, regardless as to whether the threat is perceived to come from foreign nationals or Swiss nationals.

Foreign nationals: In three situations observed, the proportion of the population that feels threatened by Swiss nationals is lower than the proportion that feels threatened by foreign nationals.

Political conflict: The menace is felt to be great in the event of political conflict. When nationals carry out their internal conflicts at the expense of non-nationals, Swiss nationals feel more threatened than foreigners themselves do.

Nationality and Migration status: The Swiss feel more threatened by non-nationals than the foreigners themselves do. Likewise, persons without a migration background feel more threatened than persons with a migration background do.

Method

The figures presented are the proportions of the population completely agreeing, rather agreeing, rather disagreeing or completely disagreeing with different statements about foreigners and Swiss nationals (see codebook questions thre_fore and thre_swi).

Further information

Tables

Sources

• Source: Survey on diversity and coexistence in Switzerland
• Years: 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022
• Universe: Permanent resident population aged 15 to 88
• Non-weighted numbers: n (2022) = 2908