Germans Experience Tide of Xenophobia

Social scientist Marc Helbling says migrants have always faced opposition, but the fact that Germans are often highly qualified means competition over jobs. Their direct manner is also not appreciated.

There are now 250,000 Germans in Switzerland, double the number eight years ago. In Zurich alone, where there are 30,000 Germans, there has been a renewed round of “German-bashing” by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party - just ahead of local elections. Their particular bugbear; the high number of German professors in the city’s universities.

Berlin’s willingness to consider buying stolen Swiss bank data to get information about possible German tax evaders is also adding to the resentment mix.

Helbling, a Swiss who works at the Social Science Research Center in Berlin, has recently completed a study entitled “Why the Swiss Germans dislike Germans”.

swissinfo.ch: You talk about “Germanophobia” in your study. Why do the Swiss feel so threatened by German immigrants?

Marc Helbling: In migration research, we often observe that migrants are seen as a threat when they immigrate in large numbers within a short period of time.

From the mid-1990s there has been a strong influx of Germans. This is because Switzerland needs a highly qualified workforce; the 2002 bilateral accords [between Switzerland and the European Union] have also made immigration easier.

Since 2005, the Germans have ranked fourth, in terms of numbers, behind Italians, Serbians/Montenegrins and Portuguese.

swissinfo.ch: The Swiss are afraid of a creeping “Germanisation”.

M.H.: Up to a certain degree, yes. You can see it in the fact that there have been complaints about the Germans in Zurich in particular. As a migration researcher you could almost speak of a Zurich phenomenon. If you ask a French-speaking Swiss or even somebody from [the Swiss capital] Bern, they would certainly not speak in such extreme terms about the Germans.

swissinfo.ch: Is the big influx the only reason why emotions are so high when it comes to the Germans?

M.H.: No, there’s more to it than that. The economic dimension plays an important role. Unlike traditional immigrants of the past, who were not so highly educated, often couldn’t really speak German and took up low-wage jobs, Germans apply for highly qualified jobs.

The typical German migrant has an academic qualification and is a doctor, university researcher or IT specialist. Swiss and Germans are therefore up against each other in a very narrow, highly-competitive segment of the work market.

This explains why you find hostility towards the Germans even among well-educated Swiss. This is a phenomenon which migration researchers do not usually observe. The theory is, the more educated the person, the less xenophobic they are.

swissinfo.ch: According to your study, German are the fourth least popular migrants after those from the former Yugoslavia, and Arab and Turkish migrants. Why don’t the Swiss like the Germans?

M.H.: I was surprised that Germans were the most unpopular west Europeans. We usually assume that people are mostly hostile to migrants from different cultural groups – which, at first glance, does not apply to the Germans.

But unlike Italians or the French, Germans are seen as culturally different by the Swiss. And this is because small differences between the cultures are perceived to have great importance.

The best example is language. Swiss German dialect [spoken on a daily basis in Switzerland] and High German [spoken in Germany and in formal contexts in Switzerland] are close relatives, but Swiss German is considered part of identity development. Those speaking High German are automatically foreigners.

swissinfo.ch: Many Swiss have an inferiority complex about speaking High German.

M.H.: Yes, most Swiss can’t express themselves so eloquently in High German and generally tend to speak more slowly than Germans, so this has strengthened their aversion to it.

But there are also other small things. In certain situations Germans often behave in a more assertive and direct way than the Swiss, which time and again meets with strong resistance.

Germans are thus quickly considered to be aggressive. The Dutch, on the other hand, although often described as loud, are not regarded in the same light.

swissinfo.ch: In the 1950s-1960s there were big xenophobic campaigns against Italian migrants. Nowadays Italians are appreciated. Could this also happen to the Germans?

M.H.: This is likely to happen, - there are numerous examples in migration research. However, simply riding out the xenophobic wave as experienced by the Germans in Switzerland is not a solution. Racism should always be taken seriously and be fought against.

For Switzerland, this means that the political world should not leave the field open to the People’s Party, which is a past master when it comes to stoking xenophobic tendencies. As was the case with the Minaret Initiative [successfully led by the party to ban minarets in Switzerland], I’m missing strong voices from the other political parties in this current debate.