Search

With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, the situation of Black people in many Western countries has come under closer scrutiny and ethnic discrimination has been brought to the forefront. Little is known about hiring discrimination against Blacks in many European countries. In a correspondence test in the Swiss labour market, we sent fictitious paired applications by candidates of Swiss (ostensibly White) and Cameroonian descent (ostensibly Black) in response to 354 adverts for sales assistants and electricians. We report significant discrimination against Black job seekers, who must send around 30 per cent more applications than White candidates in order to be invited to a job interview. The level of discrimination is substantively equivalent to results for applicants with a Kosovo-Albanian name that were included in previous correspondence tests in Switzerland. This suggests that in the Swiss case there is on average no additional penalty for skin colour. Explorations, however, reveal significant differences in discrimination rates between urban and rural settings, opening new avenues for understanding why ethnic and racial discrimination vary across geographical contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the educational and occupational trajectories among second-generation immigrants of Turkish and Western-Balkan origin in Switzerland. Using a representative sample of 1107 respondents in two Swiss urban areas, the findings reveal that descendants of immigrants have reduced chances to follow a constant successful path from education to occupation, which is mainly determined by parental socioeconomic status. However, young adults of Turkish and Western Balkan origin are significantly more often upward mobile than the majority group, a pattern that is robust against a range of controls. We find parental monitoring and family cohesion to be positively related with upward mobility. Moreover, second-generation immigrants are more likely to be upwardly mobile than starting high in the education system but subsequently moving downwards-a profile that is more frequent among Swiss origin youth. Our multivariate results indicate that a lack of intense parent-child communication and perceived discrimination in school are affecting this downward process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Switzerland is from the end of World War II an immigration country. After three decades of labour migration, in the early 1980s, family reunification progressively became the most important reason for immigration. At the time of the 2000 Census, there were 1.5 million documented foreigners living in Switzerland. This represented 20% of the resident population, one of the highest proportions of foreigners in any country in Europe. Approximately 39% of children in Switzerland were members of families of foreign origin with at least one foreign-born parent. This paper statistically describes the living conditions and socioeconomic environment of those children, by computing indicators according to the origin. It shows the huge diversity of situations regarding the socioeconomic position of parents and the social background. In particular, children from Western Europe and the United States live in highly skilled families whereas children from Portugal and the Balkans live in families with a very low level of qualification. Such results justify the formulation of integration and school policies that take into account the characteristics of each migration flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies on the generational social mobility of immigrant populations have taken into account the socio-economic characteristics of the immigrant groups on the one hand, and the historical and economic conditions of the receiving society, including the legal framework, on the other. However, little attention has so far been paid to the juridical status of immigrant groups. This paper explores the variation in education and employment performance of young people from different immigrant origins (Italians, Portuguese, Turks, Croats, Kosovars and Serbs) and of different citizenship statuses - naturalised, non-naturalised, and Swiss-by-birth. Inter-ethnic group variations become much more muted when social origin and length of stay are controlled for; however, they do not disappear altogether. Naturalised immigrant youth perform best; indeed in many cases, where they are Swiss-born, they out-perform native Swiss. This performance, however, is overlooked by Swiss society because the acquisition of Swiss citizenship makes it statistically invisible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses in general terms the 'return question' or, to be more precise, the intentions of older Italian and Spanish migrants living in Switzerland as to their place of residence after retirement, and the criteria governing their decision. Survey data reveal that the majority of respondents either planned to stay in Switzerland, or to live part of the year in Switzerland and part of the year in their home country; the return option was less popular. The literature on migration has already pointed to the existence of the 'third option', namely dividing the residence between two countries. In particular, studies on northern European retirees in southern European areas have shown evidence of this form of living arrangement. But the extent of the phenomenon among former guestworkers who came from southern countries to a northern country seems surprising. Moreover, this option, a manifestation of the 'circulation of migrants', is adopted as a project not only by people of high but also low socio-economic status. This option is popular because it is related to the development through time of a way of life defined by dual preference, namely to maintain cultural, symbolic, concrete and affective ties with both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Migration & Integration is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines several aspects of the social situation of the older immigrant population in Switzerland. It reviews their demographic history and characteristics and provides profiles of their health and well being, their material standard of life and access to social security and related benefits. It reports selected findings from an original survey of older Italian and Spanish citizens who are resident in the country, which show relatively high rates of disadvantage and poverty. The determination of a large proportion of the immigrant population to remain in Switzerland after they have ceased work demonstrates that the minorities who entered the country as labour migrants will become a permanent element of the Swiss population and its society. Neither the politicians nor the general public in Switzerland have yet accepted the reality of this new diversity. Given the continuation and indeed growth of international labour migration, the paper concludes by discussing the social policy and attitudinal options that face the governments and the population of Switzerland and many other European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we focus on an often neglected dimension of immigration, the collective one. We explore two main forms of collective assertion of immigrants: (1) political mobilisation, which is no longer as dominant as it has been in the past; and (2) cultural mobilisation, which has become increasingly important over the last ten years. After the failure of a number of political initiatives at the national level, these new forms of assertion aim at the recognition of immigrants' groups at the local community level, which in the Swiss political system is a significant operational level that also has a wide symbolic resonance. We argue that these changes are due to the immigrants' experience of status inconsistency, which involves participation in the socio-economic field and exclusion from the political arena (expressed particularly in the lack of voting rights). This is a result of Swiss migration policy and the structure of political opportunities. Whenever a lack of socio-economic or political rights is increasingly unacceptable to the groups concerned, it seems likely that forms of social mobilisation appear. Two factors have produced this decreased legitimacy of the immigrants' status: (a) the prolonged residence in the host society, which should normally result in the progressive acquisition of a better socio-economic status and greater social rights; (b) the strengthening and expansion of the European Community - where most of the immigrants come from -- reinforcing their symbolic and political resources in the negotiation of their status in the host country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]