Switzerland

Despite Switzerland’s decade-long reliance on immigrants and guest workers, it is reluctant to embrace the self-identity of an immigrant country. Switzerland has a severe labor shortage, especially in health care, where the percentage of nurses with a foreign diploma is astonishingly high, but also in engineering and in low-skilled sectors such as construction. Labor in the less prestigious sectors is underpaid and insufficiently valued. Switzerland’s bilateral agreement with the EU guarantees free movement yet has resulted in the strict control of non-EU/EFTA immigration. Non-EU/EFTA migrants, however, also contribute to the economy and society, and it is particularly this group that raises concerns: Among non-EU migrants, more women than men are tertiary educated; yet, they are also among those most likely to be un(der)employed, which points to the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and nationality. Combined with the very long and difficult process of obtaining citizenship and right-wing lobbying against (im)migrants, Switzerland offers a peculiar case situated between that of the settler state, Canada, and the until recently self-proclaimed ‘negative’ case of immigration, Japan.

Doctoral project: Who cares? Migrant nurses in Switzerland

Project start 01 August 2026
Melanie Jane Jäger, PhD candidate

The demand for nurses in Switzerland remains/is high: Population aging and a high fluctuation of workers, many of whom leave the sector altogether, result in a severe labor shortage. Therefore, migrant nurses are in particularly high demand yet face difficult entry requirements. However, the requirements for those classified as ‘highly skilled and ‘low-skilled’ within the nursing and care professions differ. This ultimately determines who is recruited and who engages in what type of care work and intersects with people’s prospects of and hopes for staying and belonging. Another relevant aspect of nursing is that most nurses are women, which makes it a highly gendered profession.

Pilot interviews and ethnographic observations with migrant nurses in Canton Zurich suggest that nationalities, migration pathways, path to job entry, residency status, life choices and job satisfaction differ depending on the formally stipulated level of skill.

Nurses’ temporary status is thus deeply intertwined with formally accorded skill level and the subjective experience of migrant workers in the same sector can vary considerably. This project attempts to uncover what this temporary status means for different types of nurses. Lastly, this skill divide also affects how intermediaries deal with migrants and return migration. Starting in August 2026, the PhD project will use ethnography and interviews to delve into nurses’ lived experiences by recognising the added structuring layers of intermediaries and policies. The project aims at providing a holistic picture of the temporariness shaping migrant nurses’ lives in Switzerland and their immediate workplaces and social networks.

Subproject on temporary workers in the IT sector and in Construction

Prof. Dr. Helena Hof, PI