I don’t think you can generalize each answer into these categories. One person’s emotion is another person’s reason.
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I think this is a strange way of looking at Frontaliers. They arose in the border regions as an easy way to solve the worker shortage issues without allowing immigration - at the time a win-win and maybe still so.
Ticino has problems all of its own. Less with Frontaliers, more with money laundering and the damn Swiss-Germans, who buy up all the properties for second or retirement homes.
Looking at 125 years of Swiss population data.
Being a bit cynic, it takes a lot of optimism to think that population always grows. Look at what an epidemic or a trade war did. And that’s while avoiding the ugliest impact of world wars. That 1990s recession lead to year 1997 having a 0.27% population growth.
It’s interesting to see that the 2 growth peaks of the last 125 years are the 2+% in the 1960s due to immigrant workers and baby boom, and Ukraine refugees in 2023 (1.67%). The last year with such population growth was 1963.
At the cantonal level, it’s another story. Zürich grows but, look at Neuchâtel,
WW1, the Flu and the 1929 crisis, caused 30 years of population decrease, from 133k to 117k. Explosive growth, then 1970s oil crisis + quartz watch crisis and the population stagnated around 1970. At the regional level, la Chaux des Fonds + Le Locle population peak was in 1970. For Val-de-Travers (absinthe!) the population peak was in 1910.
Something similar happens in other cantons, Uri, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Graubunden. Anyway, narratives of everything getting covered by concrete. Growth is ugly…until one day is not there.
1995 7 mln surpassed
2003 7.4 mln, the Bilaterale kickstart the explosive growth
2006 7.5 mln surpassed
2012 8 mln
2018 8.5 mln
2024 9 mln
So linear projection says 2036.
Though the growth might slow down a bit in the coming years because those who came 20 years ago as adults are approaching retirement by now. They may be planning to return, which might even enable them to retire a bit early.
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