Foreigners in Switzerland

The proportion of foreigners in the resident population is high, standing at 20.4% in 2005, although they are extremely unevenly spread. In Europe only Luxembourg and Liechtenstein have higher proportions.

The proportion of foreigners is particularly high among children: the 2000 census showed that overall 25.8% of children under 6 years old did not have Swiss nationality. In the five biggest cities 45% of children in this age range were not Swiss. About one fifth of the children born in Switzerland have at least one foreign parent. At the end of 2005, 22.2% of the foreigners resident in Switzerland came from one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. Italian citizens accounted for 19.3% of them, followed by citizens of Portugal (10.9%), Germany (19.3%), Turkey (4.9%), Spain (4.7%) and France (4.6%).

The overwhelming majority of foreign residents, 84.5% in 2005, comes from Europe, but the proportion whose home countries are further afield continues to increase.

Nearly one quarter of these foreign residents were born and have grown up in Switzerland; some of them now have their own children. Second-generation foreigners are often referred to as secondos (or secondas, for women).