About a quarter of a million German nationals had permanent residence in Switzerland in 2009, rising to some 300 thousand five years later. Accounting for multiple citizenships the number of German nationals living in Switzerlands is much higher, at about 450,000 in 2019.[2] For the Germans, Switzerland became the most appreciated country to settle in, to find work or to study.[3][4][5] The "surge" of immigration during the first decade of the 21st century, especially the German one, is a result of the EU-15 opening[6][7][8] and, for students, of the Bologna Process.[9]
In the first decades of the 20th century, a number of Germans and other groups living in Germany fled or were expelled by the German Empire and shortly afterwards the Nazi regime, and sought refuge in Switzerland, among other places.
21st century
Demographics
Because of the unequal size of the two countries, Germany being roughly ten times larger than Switzerland, German residents in Switzerland have a much greater visibility than Swiss residents in Germany: In 2007, about 37,000 Swiss nationals, or about 1 in 180 Swiss citizens, lived in Germany, accounting for just 0.05% of German population. At the same time, about 224,000 German nationals, or 1 in 350 German citizens, lived in Switzerland, accounting for 3% of Swiss population.[10]
The number of Germans in Switzerland has doubled in the period of 2002 to 2009. The reason for this is the Swiss–European treaty regarding the freedom of movement for workers, activated in 2002.[citation needed] While the freedom of movement treaty applies to all EU citizens, German nationals have been the main beneficiaries because their proficiency in the German language allows them to take qualified jobs in German-speaking Switzerland without the added difficulty of a language barrier.[citation needed]
As of 2009, they were the second-largest expatriate group in Switzerland, numbering 266,000 (or 3.4% of total Swiss population) second to the Italians with 294,000 (3.7% of total Swiss population). 22,000 were born in Switzerland (of these, 18,000 were minors, children born to German parents living in Switzerland). 19,000 Germans with permanent residence in Switzerland were married to a Swiss citizen.
In 2007, the number of Germans in Switzerland passed the historical maximum of 220,000 Germans recorded prior to World War I. However, because of the lower total population at the time, the pre-1914 fraction of Germans relative to total Swiss population was as high as 6%. The rate of naturalizations has also steeply increased since 2007.[11] The reason for this, beyond the rising number of qualifying German nationals who had resided in Switzerland for the twelve years required by Swiss nationality law, was a change in German nationality law which permitted German nationals to hold Swiss-German dual citizenship (while prior to 2007, Germans wishing to be naturalized in Switzerland had to give up their German citizenship).[12]
In 2017, there were almost 15,000 German nationals living in the non-German speaking cantons of Vaud, Geneva, Ticino, Neuchâtel and Jura. In the same year more than 67% of Germans, living in Switzerland, were permanent residents (i.e. have the permit C).[13]
Historical demographics 1995–2017:
year
1995
2000
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
German population (thousands)
92
110
159
174
203
235
252
263
275
284
292
298
301
304
305
percentage
1.3%
1.6%
2.4%
2.9%
3.4%
3.6%
naturalizations
1,290
3,969
3,549
3,484
3,318
3,773
4,069
5,212
4,610
5,973
2017 – German citizens with permanent residence in Switzerland in the larger German speaking cantons: Zürich 89,000 (5.9% of the inhabitants / 29.1% of the German citizens); Aargau 34,000 (5.1% / 11.2%); Bern 28,000 (2.7% / 9.1%); Thurgau 22,000 (8.0% / 7.2%); Basel-City 16,000 (8.1% / 5.2%); Lucerne 11,000 (3.4% / 4.6%); Basel-Country 12,000 (4.3% / 4.0%) – in total some 214 thousands, 70.4% of the 305 thousands.
German citizens have mostly settled in Zürich and the city's wider metropolitan area. Already at the historical maximum of German presence in Switzerland in 1910, German population in Zürich was as high as 41,000 or 22% of the city's total population. As of 2009, German population in Zürich was at about 30,000, or close to 8%.[4] As of 2015 this population counted 33,297, slightly above 8% of the 410,404 inhabitants, of which 131,168 were foreigners, some third of all people of the city of Zürich.[14]
Reception and image in Switzerland
Fears, xenophobia, feelings of being left-behind
Since 2007, there have been reports on Swiss xenophobia (or "germanophobia") directed against German immigration, both in Swiss and in German media.[15]
While Swiss opposition against immigration from Southeast Europe and Africa is – as in other places – characterized by concerns about criminality and the burden put on social welfare by large numbers of lower class or destitute immigrants, opposition to immigration from Germany has a contrary motivation, notably the fear of competition from qualified immigrants on the job market,[16] and rising prices on the real-estate market because of the increased demand created by well-to-do German immigrants, while in terms of crime rate, the German community was recorded as the group with lowest delinquency, at only 0.6% of the crime rate among Swiss nationals.[17]
The extent of and reasons for Swiss opposition to German immigration were studied in Helbling (2009–11), based on a survey from 1994 to 1995 of 1,300 Swiss (of which some 940 responded) from the city of Zürich[18] (Zürich, and the Zürich area, are the main target of recent German immigration – see demographics above). The survey found that, in 1994–95, the Germans were the fourth-most disliked immigrant group in Zürich (disliked by almost each 9th). Following – with a distance – the immigrants from Turkey (disliked by each 3rd to 4th), the Arab World (disliked by each 3rd) and Former Yugoslavia (considered as a single group, disliked by each 2nd). And disliked slightly more than the Tamils (disliked by each 10th) and Black Africans (disliked by each narrowly under each 10th of the 940 respondents).
Hostile attitudes towards immigration groups in the city of Zürich in 1994-95[18][19]
...towards
hostility – in percentage of the 940 Swiss who responded...
• Italians
1.5%
• Spaniards
1.9%
• Portuguese
3.3%
• French
4.3%
• Black Africans
9.9%
• Tamils
10.3%
• Germans
11.3%
• Turks
27.6%
• Arabs
33.1%
• Yugoslavians
51.1%
(full hostility 100%)
Helbling concludes – summing up further literature and media – that "German immigrants put in danger Swiss characteristics as much as immigrants from the Balkans", that "contrary to many other studies, education does not improve attitudes towards Germans", that "people who are young and seek to improve their job position are significantly more Germanophobic than those who are satisfied with their current job situation and are already established" and that "it appears that as much as low-skilled workers fear that poorly educated immigrants take their jobs, well-educated Swiss consider German immigrants as competitors on the job market".[16]
As to the feeling of the "intimidated" part of Swiss-Germans, feeling being left-behind, the journalist Gunhild Kübler, a German living in Switzerland, remarks:
China has 1.3 billion people, 16 times more than Germany. The Federal Republic again exactly 16 times as many as the German-speaking Switzerland. So, if a German would put himself in the position of an intimidated German Swiss, he may well imagine that his country is not adjacent in the East to the Czech Republic but to China.
Cristiana Baldauf, one of the course leaders of the Swiss integration courses for Germans and Austrians, and a German and Swiss citizen, with a German mother and Italian father, says:
I think, that what the Swiss dislike about the Germans, is the German in themselves.
Integration – differences in culture, behavior, manners, language problems
Experience shows that the excitement fades away on every major wave of immigration with its increasing integration. So, a.o. also Helbling[16] cites the popular example of now largely integrated Italians, who came in one of the "waves" in the '60s as gastarbeiters to Switzerland, and whose generations are today a part of the society of the German-speaking Switzerland, without giving up their culture.
It is particularly notable that Italians are the most liked immigrants, while at their arrival in the 1950s and 1960s they were the group of immigrants that attracted the most hostilities.
In the relations of the German-Swiss and the incoming German come up, overtly or covertly, specific misunderstandings – perceived similarities, different mentalities and manners and, now already well known, language problems and differences.[4][16][20][22][23]
Cristiana Baldauf comments on the fundamental differences, on the petty ones and on the different languages:
One has to bear in mind that the Swiss are ticking quite differently as we do.
The language plays a central role in the misunderstanding. The Swiss German is more than just a dialect for most German-speaking Swiss, it is the mother tongue, the language of the heart. Much of what has to do with proximity is expressed with the Swiss German: intimacy, spontaneity and emotions [...] High German is indeed learned and spoken at school, although the active knowledge remains hidden away in the cellar, often making the Swiss feeling inferior to the eloquent Germans.
↑ (ap): Schweiz weiterhin beliebtestes Ziel: Immer mehr Deutsche wandern aus – Immer mehr Deutsche kehren ihrem Land den Rücken: Im vergangenen Jahr stieg die Zahl der Auswanderer auf 155'300 und damit den höchsten Stand seit 1954, wie das Statistische Bundesamt am Dienstag in Wiesbaden mitteilte. Das beliebteste Ziele war dabei mit 18'000 Auswanderern die Schweiz. Erst mit Abstand folgen die USA (13'800) und Österreich (10'300), NZZ, 30 October 2007
↑ EU-15 for short – more precisely: EU-15 / EU-17, EU-8 and EFTA – i.e. EU-15: the "old" EU member states, EU-17: plus Cyprus and Malta, EU-8: ten new EU-Staaten minus Cyprus and Malta – see: Personenfreizügigkeit Schweiz – EU/EFTA, SEM, auf sem.admin.ch
↑ Note that this comparison ignores dual citizenship. As of 2007, Switzerland recorded 75,000 Swiss citizens residing in Germany, while Germany recorded only 37,000 foreign nationals with Swiss citizenship, suggesting that the remaining 38,000 people have dual Swiss-German citizenship.[dubious–discuss]
1 2 Institute of Sociology of the University of Zurich, October 1994 to March 1995, 1'300 targeted participants between 18 and 65 of age, response rate 72%, i.e. some 940 respondents (source: Helbling 2009-11) – a survey conducted by Jörg Stolz (et al.?), published in German: Soziologie der Fremdenfeindlichkeit. Theoretische und empirische Analysen, Campus, Frankfurt/New York 2000 and Einstellungen zu Ausländern und Ausländerinnen 1969 und 1995: eine Replikationsstudie, in: Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny (publisher): Das Fremde in der Schweiz, Seismo, Zürich 2001, pp.33–74
↑ graph (source: Jörg Stolz (2000) – fig. II, p. 7, in: Marc Helbling: Germanophobia in Switzerland (PDF), Discussion Paper SP IV 2010-702, WZB Berlin, May 2010
↑ Marc Helbling summing up Gianni D’Amato (2001) and Josef M. Niederberger (2004) in: Germanophobia in Switzerland (PDF), Discussion Paper SP IV 2010-702, WZB Berlin, May 2010, p.6
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's population of 9 million are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zürich, Geneva and Basel.
Switzerland had a population of 8.57 million as of mid-2019. Its population quadrupled over the period 1800 to 1990. Population growth was steepest in the period after World War II, it slowed during the 1970s and 1980s but has since increased to 1% during the 2000s.
The German diaspora consists of German people and their descendants who live outside of Germany. The term is used in particular to refer to the aspects of migration of German speakers from Central Europe to different countries around the world. This definition describes the "German" term as a sociolinguistic group as opposed to the national one since the emigrant groups came from different regions with diverse cultural practices and different varieties of German. For instance, the Alsatians and Hessians were often simply called "Germans" once they set foot in their new homelands.
The Swiss People's Party, also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre, is a national-conservative and right-wing populist political party in Switzerland. Chaired by Marcel Dettling, it is the largest party in the Federal Assembly, with 62 members of the National Council and 6 of the Council of States.
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Islam in Switzerland has mostly arrived via immigration since the late 20th century. Numbering below 1% of total population in 1980, the fraction of Muslims in the population of permanent residents in Switzerland has quintupled in thirty years, estimated at just above 5% as of 2013. A majority is from Former Yugoslavia ; an additional 20% is from Turkey. This is due to the fact that in the 1960s and 1970s, Switzerland encouraged young men from Yugoslavia and Turkey to come as guest workers. Initially these young men were only planning on staying in Switzerland temporarily, however, revised Swiss immigration laws in the 1970s permitted family regrouping. Consequently, these men ended up staying in Switzerland as these new laws allowed the wives and children of these young men into the country. Since this time period, most of the Muslim immigration to Switzerland stems from asylum seekers arriving primarily from Eastern Europe.
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Switzerland is not a member state of the European Union (EU). It is associated with the Union through a series of bilateral treaties in which Switzerland has adopted various provisions of European Union law in order to participate in the Union's single market, without joining as a member state. Among Switzerland's neighbouring countries, all but one are EU member states.
The Swiss people are the citizens of the multi-ethnic Swiss Confederation (Switzerland) regardless of ethno-cultural background or people of self-identified Swiss ancestry.
Hugo Loetscher was a Swiss writer and essayist.
Swiss Standard German, or Swiss High German, referred to by the Swiss as Schriftdeutsch, or German: Hochdeutsch, is the written form of one of four official languages in Switzerland, besides French, Italian, and Romansh. It is a variety of Standard German, used in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and in Liechtenstein. It is mainly written, and rather less often spoken.
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Italian immigration to Switzerland is related to the Italian diaspora in Switzerland. Italian emigration to Switzerland took place mainly from the end of the 19th century.
African immigrants to Switzerland include Swiss residents, both Swiss citizens and foreign nationals, who have migrated to Switzerland from Africa. The number has quintupled over the period of 1980 to 2007, with an average growth rate of 6% per annum. According to official Swiss population statistics, 73,553 foreigners with African nationality lived in Switzerland as of 2009. Since the census records nationality, not ethnic origin, there is no official estimate of the number of naturalized Swiss citizens from Africa.
Daniel Thürer is a Swiss jurist and professor emeritus of international, comparative constitutional, and European law at the University of Zurich. He is a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and of the Institut de Droit International, and presides the German International Law Association. Currently, he is a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.
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A significant wave of immigration from the former Yugoslavia to Switzerland occurred during the 1990s and 2000s. While moderate numbers of Yugoslav citizens had residence in Switzerland during the 1980s, the bulk of immigration took place as a consequence of the Yugoslav Wars and by family reunion of those who had immigrated during this period.
Emilie Kempin-Spyri was the first woman in Switzerland to graduate with a law degree and to be accepted as an academic lecturer. However, as a woman she was not permitted to practice as an attorney. She emigrated to New York where she taught at a law school she established for women. She was the niece of the author Johanna Spyri.
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