German immigration to Switzerland
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. For the Germans, Switzerland became the most appreciated country to settle in, to find work or to study.
The "surge" of immigration during the first decade of the 21st century, especially the German one, is a result of the EU-15 opening and, for students, of the Bologna Process.
History
Ever since the emergence of Switzerland and Germany as distinct nations in the Early Modern period – the Swiss became exempt from the jurisdiction of the Imperial Diet in 1499 as a result of the Swabian War, formal recognition of Swiss independence dates to 1648 – there has been considerable population movement in both directions. Meaningful population statistics became available only after the Napoleonic era, with the formation of the restored Swiss Confederacy and the German Confederation in 1815.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.
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.
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.
As of 2009, they were the second-largest expatriate group in Switzerland, numbering 266,000 second to the Italians with 294,000. 22,000 were born 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. 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.
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.
Historical demographics 1995–2017:
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%.
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 Zurich.
Reception and image in Switzerland
;Fears, xenophobia, feelings of being left-behindSince 2007, there have been reports on Swiss xenophobia directed against German immigration, both in Swiss and in German media.
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, 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.
The extent of and reasons for Swiss opposition to German immigration were studied in Helbling, based on a survey from 1994-95 of 1,300 Swiss from the city of Zürich. The survey found that, in 1994–95, the Germans were the fourth-most disliked immigrant group in Zürich. Following – with a distance – the immigrants from Turkey, the Arab World and Former Yugoslavia. And disliked slightly more than the Tamils and Black Africans.
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1.5%
1.9%