Living Together in Geneva
LIVING 1 TOGETHER IN GENEVA A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY by Antoine Maurice
the observatory of the fondation pour genève "impact" – Booklet Nr 4 1
LIVING TOGETHER IN GENEVA
Booklet "Impact" Nr 4
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY by antoine maurice
Antoine Maurice is a journalist, solicitor and sociologist, Professor Emeritus of Communication Science at the Universities of Neuchâtel and Geneva, former editor of the Journal de Genève and served as a diplomat for the Confederation between 1969 and 1976. 3
Summary
Foreword 6 By Ivan Pictet, Chairman, Fondation pour Genève
Introduction 10 By Antoine Maurice
The diversities of Geneva 14 Migration maps by continent 18
Living in Geneva: Taking our place on the world map 28
Living in Geneva: A short history of the territory 32
Living in the canton 38
Living in the canton: Circles and communities 48
Living in the canton: Migrants and refugees 58
Living in the canton: Working together 68
By way of conclusion: Common values and identity 78
Appendices Tables of migrants in Geneva (by nationality and residence permit) 86
Acknowledgements 92 5 foreword by Ivan pictet 6 foreword
The Portuguese of Geneva welcomed the victory of Portugal at Eurofoot 2016 with “Long live the homeland”. They have been living in the city for one or two generations. For the most part they have no thought of returning to Portugal. They are at home here, even though Geneva is not their “homeland”. Not any more than it is that of the Italians, Spaniards, French, Germans and Americans or all those who have established their residence here.
Their “homeland” remains in their hearts; it provides them with valuable emotions tied to their original affiliation. In a way, it’s a portable homeland that can be hung up in windows anywhere when some sporting or cultural event call for it.
Geneva is a place where many people from elsewhere, either from the near vicinity or further afield, settle down. It has always been thus. The mixture is its great historical experience. We’re proud of it. But what is not taught in school, what has so far seldom been the subject of studies, hence the idea of it, is the daily lived experience: the practical arrangements for sharing space and property, and jobs in particular; the friction of cultures, the misunderstandings, suspicions and conflicts; but also, the reconciliations, the encounters, the more or less explicit agreements, the small solutions which ultimately overcome the differences because it is in everyone’s best interest. All this work of accommodating each other has made the Geneva we know. It is also this work that is at the heart of the activity that the Fondation pour Genève pursues to the extent of its modest means.
Yet today there are officials from multinational companies or international organisations in Geneva who see a negative trend in the state of mind of the local population. There are also “real or fake refugees” to suspect or reject when circumstances call for an exceptional show of hospitality, as is the case today. Overall, however, the difficulties of coexistence happily fade quickly, judging them by history. And it is good to remember the work of our country’s fathers to face and resolve current issues that irritate and disorient our small population, difficulties seen as new, if not insurmountable, even though they are the cut from the same cloth that created the tradition of Geneva.
Foreigners welcomed in the past in times of uproar or controversy, today happily forgotten by history, have contributed greatly to the development of the city and the region through their work, their reputation and their personal commitment. High-flying internationals or simple political refugees, or workers in search of jobs: the examples abound for centuries of groups or individuals, which, by their presence, have made their mark on the memory of Geneva.
A foreign community of more than a third of the population today contributes to its high reputation, as they do to that of Switzerland as a whole. Without this community, such a small city would not have the image Geneva projects in the world. With this fourth impact study booklet, initiated by the Fondation pour Genève, dedicated to “Living together” in the enlarged area of our region, I invite you to take note of what has been accomplished. I invite you to trust this place, made stronger by inclusion rather than exclusion. The appeal of Geneva gives those living here a duty of hospitality, social intelligence and resistance to simplistic rejection. foreword 7
The Geneva region has become international through a chain of on balance advantageous circumstances. Its internationalism now demands it. This calls for a more fluid relationship with each other. Whether in the office, on the street or in a tram, at every moment you are struck by impressive diversity of the people that you come across. Everyone has a mobile phone, connected to their family, their friends, their work colleagues, away from here, sometimes far away. The fate of these people is not written anywhere. Only their present is in Geneva. For how long? Which of these foreigners here will find “a reason to live here”? What will we do for them to find it? This is the challenge we face if, as I believe and hope, Geneva will continue to build on its values as a land of welcome in harmony with its expansion.
It was Antoine Maurice who took on the challenge of writing the fourth booklet on “Living together”. It concludes a comprehensive study conducted at the request of the Fondation pour Genève by the Universities of Geneva, Lausanne, the IHEID and the EPFL, on the impact of International Geneva on the Lake Geneva region. The first three booklets, of which we can only recommend a careful reading, clearly demonstrate the convergence of material interests between locals and internationals. The latter significantly contribute to more than half the Canton of Geneva’s added value.
As to defining the “feel” of living together, it’s difficult to quantify this element on which Antoine Maurice’s study brings to bear, in this “melting pot” that represents our Lake Geneva region.
Ivan Pictet President Fondation pour Genève ntroduction 9 introduction by antoine maurice 10 introduction
Introduction: a definition
The term “living together”, in the sense of harmonious cohabitation in the city or the country, dates back to the 1950s, although the expression itself is actually older. Before World War II, this would have been referred to as “social cohesion” but this sociological term has been supplanted since by “living together”, used as a noun. The current success of the expression is probably related to globalisation, insofar as it forms both a mould for the cohabitation within societies, largely driven by technological factors, and an opportunity for societies to fragment into more tenuous components than the global and nation-state. Thus with everyone no longer automatically having their place within stable political structures, the institutional order is threatened. What is needed is a rethink of the social contract of the cities and territories, their living together. Just look at the resurgent independence movements in our countries, in Catalonia, Scotland, Corsica or at times in the Italian Northern League. Not to mention the nationalist outbursts of the post-Yugoslav Balkans and post-Soviet Caucasus. All express an identity crisis that tilts towards a change in scope of living together, either by the total or partial rejection of the usual national framework. Add to this the growing importance of cities in the international order, especially the largest of them.
Living together is thus based on three pillars: the geographical territory, the population whose composition varies with time, and power: institutions and politics. Culture, identity, or as we might say, mores and attitudes, are all results of this three-way dynamic. Culture, in the broadest sense covers the effective forms of living together. For example, the amicable settling of neighbourhood incidents or the rules of the road. These factors are objectives to the extent that, although they are incommensurable, culture in particular, they have a factual basis. Territory is measured in space and is divided administratively. The demographic composition: nationals/foreigners, residents/immigrants, is divided into categories and is subject to updated statistics (see full tables in the appendices). The collective culture, for its part, is based on objective parameters such as level of education and group behaviour, including that of politicians, of traditions and of foreign cultural contributions to the host country. We see that living together, in addition to its objective basis, is also a question of representation, i.e., of the look that everyone casts upon on the entire society, provided that it is shared by the majority. We are living together when a large part or all of the population feels (represents itself) in unison with the values and behaviour of a particular community in a particular territory, administered by recognised authorities.
Living together therefore consists – in all geographical areas and categories of the population – in habits, social practices and behaviours inspired by a set of shared values. This process results in a feeling of a possible or even peaceful cohabitation, in tune with the political authorities and powers. In this sense, living together also becomes a representation for most or all of the affected population. This representation determines the general and mutual acceptance of one and all. In this fragile and changeable representation, politics plays a critical role. It would be simplistic to define living together as the simple allocation of a place to everyone, through land and spatial planning. What is needed a strategic vision on the part of the authority and the promise of a policy to achieve that vision. For an average-sized city introduction 11
like Geneva, that promise is aimed at a thoughtful, perhaps even inspired, urban planning, which in this case, transcends the canton to Vaud and France. The example of Zurich is interesting, which in recent years has surmounted the migratory population pressure, the housing crisis, the vocation of the neighbourhoods and the allocation of transport access in an inspiration of solidarity largely stemming from City Hall. Zurich (canton and city) is recognized in Switzerland as a model.
The acceptance by the population thus would not exist without shared values and a certain political sense of the common good, but it is not a full-fledged ideology in and of itself. Living together is the opposite of war and social anomie. It also opposes the separation by rupture and exclusion and the mere living side-by-side of different populations. Living together must reconcile the freedom of the individual and the collective momentum. This means that it maintains to the present day a special relationship with the liberal democracies, which promote freedom, and the collective in the pluralism of opinions. There is no perfect living together, even in the most successful societies of the past and present. Nevertheless, there is a living together even under authoritarian regimes or under the authority of a contemporary Islamic law among the community of believers. There is a growing continuity between the various social forms of living together, from harmony to war, although it is difficult to locate, by comparison, the degree of living together for a given society. Opinion polls measure some of these, imperfectly and uncertainly, just as we measure public opinion in general. The resulting consistency is then the expression of living together in a given society. Living together is manifested by actions and institutions, through professional life as well as associational activity and their effects on the individual, by the political institutions and laws of the city when they are recognised. Neither the actions and behaviour, nor the institutions and values can be quantified, but the clues and traces of their dynamics exist beyond the bare facts of the territory and population, which justifies a review of first one and the other. 12 introduction
"Course de l’Escalade" 13
1. The Diversities of Geneva 14 The Diversities of Geneva
The Diversities of Geneva
The territory of the canton is characterised by its fairly fixed smallness, by the intrinsic diversity of the inhabitants of the city and country, docks and banks, as opposed to the mainland. The isolation of the canton within France leads to its having one sole road to Switzerland. The border line around the canton serves both as a Swiss closing and an opening to the European continent through cross-border routes. The autonomy of the local and state political entities marks the territory with a certain degree of institutional redundancy called, as it is in France, “a thousand administrative leaves”. These elements, though present in the lives of the people living there, chiefly have an affect the habitat, the source of diversity and potential inequalities. Housing is experiencing a decades-long scarcity crisis. (See below for the story of the territory).
Demographic diversity
At the start of 2016, the Genevan population reached 490,518, thereby approaching the half million expected by the end of the year. This population growth of 9.4% over the past decade is a historical figure. One that is no doubt due to the continued prosperity of the canton, despite the economic setbacks suffered about ten years ago, combined with the narrowness of the territory and its housing supply in particular. The growth was partly driven by the natural birth rate among the indigenous population, outstripping their death rate. It is mainly the result of the significant foreign immigration of 8,000 in 2015. The number of foreign migrants was 21,804 in 2015 out of a total of nearly 200,000 established foreign residents. Foreign residents (those having received a residence permit or equivalent) represent 41.2% of the population. These are the ones that should be analysed, especially the newcomers, to assess the progress and impediments of their coexistence with Swiss residents and to project the prospects for a continued population growth as far as possible.
Global factors of migration
The High Commissioner for Refugees has recorded a steady but irregular rise in migration in the world since World War II. The overall number of migrants worldwide, however, has exceeded 40 to 55 million over the past decade. With decolonization, then the insufficient result of development efforts in poor countries – especially in Africa – and increasing economic interdependence, followed by the global economic crisis of the late 2000s, not all countries come out evenly. Some are experiencing a mass emigration, now intensified by the globalization of trade and the comparison, ostensibly for everyone, between rich and poor societies. Political crises and recent wars in the world of the near and middle east are in turn producing mass departures affecting Switzerland and Geneva. The degradation of the climate and the environment for its part threatens to produce a wave of mass migration to rich countries including Europe and Switzerland. Thousands of individuals and families affected are already seeking refuge in developed countries. They form the growing contingent of economic migrants, barely recognised as refugees, if they are at all. The Diversities of Geneva 15
Rich countries cling tightly to what they have and are reluctant to share their territory in a context of reduced and intermittent economic growth. The Swiss are in solidarity with Europe and the world through their economic relationships and a tradition of hospitality and welcoming refugees expressed in 2015 for Germany by its Chancellor. Geneva has always maintained that value in its history. But Europeans and the Swiss are simultaneously beset by political movements that make immigration the center of the social and political problems facing the country. The migrant crisis of the summer 2015 put Europe to one of its most serious institutional and political challenges. It is as yet unclear whether the two federal structures, the Swiss and European EU, will survive such a challenge unscathed. Justified or not, the British exit from the EU is just one among others of the perception of the migration crisis In Geneva the pursuit of living together comes at a price, in other words, the price controlling of the flux of migrants into the canton. This is done through the triple mediation of globalization, the European Community and the Swiss Confederation. This evidently implies that that the canton does not control the main parameters of its own social cohesion.
Different categories of migrants
They are measured by various categories: by national origin and if we can say international (“international” staff in the largest sense of the term), or by type of residence, work or settlement permit in the host country. A distinction is made between voluntary migrants and those who migrate under pressure to seek political asylum or long-term exile. Although the migrant crisis of 2015 rightly placed the emphasis on the numbers of asylum seekers, all migrants are not by law refugees. The UNHCR Convention of 1951 set relatively precise criteria for the application and the granting of asylum by the host country. However, while the majority of migrants do not meet the criteria for refugee status (discrimination due to religion, race or political affiliation in their country of origin or repression and violence suffered), many are those for whom poverty and desperation forced them to emigrate. Because no one expatriates themselves for their pleasure. However, these then, without fulfilling the legal conditions for asylum, deserve a decent reception. Discussions are ongoing internationally on extending the refugee and asylum criteria. They are taking place specifically in Switzerland, where the growing body of migrants is creating a feeling of saturation, a sense that is backed by powerful cantonal and federal parties. Integration into the Geneva host society still depends on the assistance provided on arrival and on settling, in addition to the residence permits received and naturalisations performed. Migrants are also distinguished by their average young age, which is favourable for the general population. The tables annexed from the Cantonal Office of Statistics give figures on the different categories for the past ten years, summarized below.
Residence and work permits
There are several categories of these, of which the most important are, by increasing quality of authorisation: temporary residence permits, especially for asylum seekers (applicants), short-term, annual and long-term settlement permit for the most highly approved migrants, in addition to international officers and temporary migrants with 16 The Diversities of Geneva
special status. The Confederation rules on the permits at the request of the cantons. Geneva is a canton with large anticipated share of migrants. They are expected by the economy and by the authorities, including international officials or executives, usually European, of national or multinational corporations. Other migrants, coming from dramatic circumstances abroad are not expected in Switzerland and Geneva, as the number of political refugees asylum seekers or economic migrants, they are not recognised by international law and nevertheless allowed in in part. The Diversities of Geneva 17
2.
Living in Geneva Taking our place on the world map 18 The Diversities of Geneva
Europe Schengen
Total 2014 2015 2005–15
United Kingdom Residents 7393 Migrants 944 12142
Germany Residents 4960 Migrants 595 8784
Italy Residents 21059 Migrants 1535 12834
Total 2014 2015 2005–15
France Residents 29361 Migrants 4269 36243
Spain Residents 14969 Migrants 1274 9382
Portugal Residents 37388 Migrants 1605 33380 The Diversities of Geneva 19
Europe excluding Schengen
Total 2014 2015 2005-15
Russia Residents 3808 Migrants 402 6186 Applicants 18
Croatia Residents 336 Migrants 31 262 Applicants
Bosnia - Herzegovina Residents 978 Migrants 37 388 Applicants 9
Kosovo Residents 5214 Migrants 291 2473 Applicants 8 165
Macedonia Residents 774 Migrants 291 773 Applicants 8
Serbia Residents 1233 Migrants 75 1107 Applicants 16
Turkey Residents 2242 Migrants 162 2351 Applicants 13 20 The Diversities of Geneva
Africa
Total 2014 2015 2005-15
Tunisia Residents 1583 Migrants 142 1569 Applicants 18
Algeria Residents 1110 Migrants 114 1148 Applicants
Egypt Residents 752 Migrants 114 1512 Applicants
Morocco Residents 1930 Migrants 105 1929 Applicants 12
Eritrea Residents 1387 Migrants 523 1791 Applicants 512
Sudan Residents 230 Migrants 31 322 Applicants 18
Congo Kin. Residents 1307 Migrants 57 591 Applicants 10
Cameroon Residents 960 Migrants 66 1124 Applicants 6
Nigeria Residents 572 Migrants 105 624 Applicants 50 The Diversities of Geneva 21
Asia
Total 2014 2015 2005–15
Syria Residents 611 Migrants 257 936 Applicants 219
Iraq Residents 573 Migrants 196 429 Applicants 166
Iran Residents 658 Total Migrants 105 1282 2014 2015 2005–15 Applicants 40 Japan Afghanistan Residents 1388 Residents 545 Migrants 271 3219 Migrants 390 883 Applicants Applicants 369 Philipinnes Pakistan Residents 1670 Residents 625 Migrants 128 1783 Migrants 77 1028 Applicants Applicants 9 China India Residents 1903 Residents 1993 Migrants 362 3894 Migrants 416 5332 Applicants 9 Applicants
Sri Lanka Residents 808 Migrants 142 845 Applicants 105 22 The Diversities of Geneva
America
Total 2014 2015 2005–15
Canada Residents 1659 Migrants 281 4009
United States Residents 4454 Migrants 932 12520
Mexico Residents 490 Migrants 107 1357
Colombia Residents 1366 Migrants 123 1678
Brazil Residents 3594 Migrants 422 5107
Peru Residents 1049 Migrants 54 938
Bolivia Residents 1118 Migrants 138 1321 The Diversities of Geneva 23
The total number of foreign migrants in Geneva was 21,804 in 2015. It has differed for some countries over the past ten years, while remaining stable on average overall. Foreign migrants, of all categories of permits, including international officials, for the most part come from the EU Europe region, namely France, Portugal, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, followed by Germany (first for Switzerland as a whole). The European Union accounted for more than 50% of the total number of foreign migrants who arrived in Geneva in 2015: nearly 13,000 people. If we add to this source of migrants the Balkan countries, following the political upheavals of the 1990s in Croatia, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, plus some from of the countries of the former Soviet Union, and Turkey, Europe thus provides the primary complement to the indigenous population. On the order of 1,050 migrants. European migration is one of young people, often well educated and having resources, who are likely to go in for short-term employment. Well-off retirees essentially form a significant contingent among European migrants. Thus few refugees among the Europeans, except some Balkan refugees, but a majority of foreign migrants thanks to the free movement of persons by way of a signed agreement by Switzerland with the European Union.
As for the other continents, Asia then the Middle East comes in second for the number of migrants, including many applicants, some 2,400 arriving in Geneva in 2015. Asia is followed, in descending order, by migrants from Africa, 1,300, half of which are applicants and then America: 2050 migrants. The figures, without prejudging the political significance of the workforce here (too few in number or too many foreigners), are not large relative to the Geneva population, either in absolute values or in growth over recent years. Certainly canton is the most endowed with foreign residents among other urban cantons. Switzerland has done its part supporting efforts of European solidarity vis-à-vis the recent Eastern crises, but the quota subscribed to in Bern in 2015-16 for refugees from Syria and Iraq is neither full nor definitive. Nor has the article in the Swiss Constitution on an immigration limitation adopted by the referendum of 7 February 2014 yet been resolved. In national and international comparison, the canton certainly gathers together a considerable proportion of foreigners, indeed to an unparalleled degree, albeit one that has been relatively stable over the long term. The question remains as to knowing “when many immigrants becomes too many?” If there exists a looming threat of an excess of foreign migrants, then according to what criteria we measure this “excess”? The question relates to the origin of migrants, particularly to those applicants seeking asylum in Switzerland in the canton of Geneva. As regards European migrants, these are only those from outside free movement (the European Schengen and Dublin agreements) who are counted among the applicants, but whose numbers are relatively low: Kosovars, Albanians, Bosnians and other heirs of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and to a lesser extent the of the USS R. Against the total number of migrants, the numbers from this category remains modest as we can attest to. European migrants are more numerous in Geneva, but most come from countries that are geographically and culturally nearby. Because behind this first question, the highly subjective element of the culture of origin is critical for Swiss living together, in the eyes of the proponents of a more restricted immigration.
Most of the “alien” immigrants come from extra-European continents, in decreasing order of magnitude: Asia and the Middle East, Africa and America. Sri Lankans, Filipinos, Pakistanis and Afghans, Syrians and Iraqis beset by wars and prolonged 24 The Diversities of Geneva
crises form the largest contingents. The same is the case for the Africans: those from Eritrea and East Africa, North Africans, the Congolese and Central African nationals. Americans form relatively large contingents of migrants established to date, but their numbers are weak or non-existent in terms of current applicants.
Another question: fears and phobias of saturation feed on the anticipation of future migration. Switzerland, like other prosperous and democratic countries, takes its share in global immigration dramas. And, as with other European countries, it is not doing enough for the refugees according to UNHC R in particular, by restricting its practice of asylum. To date, it has not been at the front line of the rise of immigration, but it is reasonable to foresee the continuation, not of a wave, but of the trend in growth beginning in 2014. The rest is matter of politics: the debate on the numbers and on Switzerland’s capabilities and methods of integration, which would allow it to define the criteria of too much or too little. The following chapters offer insight into the practices and values of the integration of foreigners in Geneva. 25
2.
Living in Geneva Taking our place on the world map 26 27 28 Living in Geneva: Taking our place on the world map
Capital and surrounding area
Just as there is no geography that does not have its attendant politics (Jacques Lévy and Michel Lussault, Geography Dictionary, Belin 2013), there is none that does not begin with the naming of places: toponymy. Living together is first of all about naming, or at the least about qualifying the place before addressing the population. Geneva is no exception to this definition. Before knowing the essence of Geneva, the cantonal entity, and how we live together there, we must examine the expressions that speak to where it is, hence the space and the population that it encompasses over time. The city has a variety of expressions about the place, as well as a variety of people bound to it a priori by dint of their residence. Of this old, if not ancient city, one hears different and sometimes contradictory things said, term by term. For example, urban agglomeration and political city, but also city republic and canton within the meaning of the “Stand” of the former Confederation, with a hinterland. Today it’s taken to be the capital of Switzerland on weather maps of Europe today because it is one of the few Swiss cities that are known abroad. Geneva is also the “City at the end of the lake,” to express both its periphery and its secondarity. Geneva therefore belongs to Switzerland, to the gaze from inside and outside. Its membership was manifested with fanfare in 2015, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Geneva Confederation. It belongs to Switzerland in an eminent way. If foreigners attribute to it pretensions of being a capital, the canton, for its part, seizes upon it at its farther extremity, on the Swiss border granting it access in and out.
Lake Geneva region
Ensconced in French territory but a bridge to Central and Eastern Switzerland, historical and deep, Geneva communicates with Switzerland through the Vaud, which is contiguous to it by many geographical aspects including the continuity of the Lake Geneva and the mountains of the Alps. Spiritual continuity, and also cultural: the homogeneity of religions, language and population, including the immigration waves of the 19th and 20th centuries. So those who use Lake Geneva as a physical or cultural door entrance – the majority of travellers over the last three centuries – approach Switzerland by Geneva and often (mis)take Geneva for Switzerland, not because of the physical or demographic mass of the territory, which is of very average size, but because of its historical visibility, at the centre of Europe: its fairs, trade, the Reformation and the geopolitical divide it entails.
Near and far
“City at the end of the lake,” however. Can you find more exact, and yet even flatter definition of Geneva? It is not for nothing that the other Swiss, the French-speaking Romand especially, have named it this, whereas Montreux or Lausanne on the other side have no right to this rather reductive name. Since a lake cannot have an end, the other is clearly a beginning at the mouth of the Rhone. So for the closure of Geneva, the key to the former diocese is just as important as the isolation in foreign territory. But the semantic shifts are always open, where the topography seems intangible. The end also means a limit, a boundary beyond which there is an outside and a non-national location, highlighted by the narrowness of the flow on the road aptly name “Switzerland’s” and also on the motorway that doubles it. The Living in Geneva: Taking our place on the world map 29
end of the lake from this point of view is felt by many Confederates as an externality in power. Confirmed, as are the clichés, by other contents of the city, including its social fabric and even his “French” Republican political mores. Not to mention its international affinities, both valued by the Swiss government officially and often caricatured by public opinion. The same could be said of several Swiss cities whose geographical identities border on other countries or other cultural areas. For instance, Zurich, the Germanic cultural and economic centre; Basel another border city; Piedmontese Lugano and even bilingual Berne. Geneva, however has, more than any other, the dual nature of Swiss city and post-national periphery. The international foreigner is in his heart, almost since the European valorisation of the nation and of nationalism in the 19th century, producing many migrants and refugees.
Both Swiss and regional
Federalism is about putting everyone in their place (sometimes back in their place) including in the Swiss confederal imagination. Hence a Geneva reduced to a its narrow territory. Both location and identity are dependent on the dialectics of the near and far, both factually and in terms of image. Foreigners are often happy for Geneva’s “nearness” – two hours by plane – to the major European capitals, where the density of the culture and the power of decision- makers are concentrated. Today these are Paris, Rome, Berlin, Brussels, London, Barcelona or Madrid. By the same token, just steps away you also have the Alps, the Mediterranean or the Ocean or the plains and forests of the East and other famous Old Continent landscapes. Other foreigners and Swiss, sometimes the same ones, deplore a “remote” Geneva, despite all the key decision-maker hubs where most of the added values of globalisation are created. Thus Geneva, in the final analysis small, yet globalised. Assuredly globalised, like any other modern city, but not a global city due to its lack demographic and economic critical mass and lack of networks and flows.D oes this point to a missed calling to become larger or to a legitimate sense of proportion on the part of the inhabitants?
Near and far: emotionally too. How many strangers or casual border neighbours rejoice at the geographical and human proximity of Geneva. Since the dawn of time the surnames have been partly shared with the Savoie and Ain, and intermarriage with the hinterland abounded. Ancient dialects and phrases likewise fell within the Franco-Provençal ambit. By contrast, religions and cultures differ, as evidenced by Geneva’s route from mooring of the canton to Switzerland in 1815.From there, the institutions, the political culture and nationalities themselves diverge within a self-same Geneva area. What makes cooperation more difficult, and yet natural, is built into the territory itself. Geneva seen as close is the flip side of a Geneva seen from afar.
Its historical legacy is that of a regional capital. In this sense, the Savoie and the Ain recognise their traditional economic ties with the canton: agriculture, free zones, fine watchmaking and mechanics, banking and financial potential, from here to Lyon. Its economic cloutinfluences the capacity for political initiative by the Geneva player. All this confirms a certainprecedence, a head-end effect, which goes back in time and which has set in, despite the negotiation of the Geneva territories in the 19th century and the annexation of the Savoy to France. The political dimension, the advent of the modern region, mainly European and economic, however, has not ended. On this point, history comes up short. Since the end of World War II, the regional project has been renewed, now called by various names. Here we find a diversity of, if not an 30 Living in Geneva: Taking our place on the world map
uncertainty about, the toponymy of Geneva: conurbation (urban), the socio-political Greater Geneva, or the Lake Geneva region, whose economic leadership is shared with the canton of Vaud. The proliferation of instances of French-Geneva-Vaud collaboration creates a toponymic and administrative “mille-feuille.” When the region ceases to be a mental impression and becomes a political project, it makes matters difficult.W hy? Because of the incompatibilities: differences in structures and political culture, federalism versus centralism, all of which seem to conspire to curb any regional construction. For example, who will decide upon and produce most of the budget costs? Basically at play here is a continued uncertainty regarding political boundaries, which nobody, neither France nor the European Community, nor even Geneva or Switzerland, wishes to revise and resolve. The resistance of Vaud or Lyon or Grenoble to the “city of the end of the lake,” yet shows that the question of the head-end (the capital) is played out over this vast territory. But all would be in favour of the creation of a European region, on their terms, whose centre by dint of geopolitical logic, failing Lyon, Grenoble or Lausanne, should be Geneva.
European and international
A European Geneva, somehow by lack as much as by addition. Geneva is geographically at the heart of Europe, equidistant by air to the European capitals. It belongs to Central Europe, by the close connection of Switzerland to Austria, while also facing the Mediterranean via the Rhone River and to the Atlantic coast via the Basel ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. It is French, English, German and Italian-speaking by way of its Confederates. As in other cities of Switzerland, you can’t say to the Genevois that they turn their backs to Europe. Since the 16th century, they have the sense of being both from there and of there. The Reformation put them on the world map, this map was then that of Europe. The Treaty of Westphalia (1648), the end of the wars of religion and the Franco-Spanish-Savoie issues placed Geneva in the dependence of the powers of the time and at the mercy of the geopolitical games of the continent. In other words, these strengthened the European character of Geneva. The Revolution and the French occupation, the 19th century, forged the link to Switzerland later as well as that of Geneva to the continent, in eminently causing waves out of scale to its size, as well a link to the historical account of the European Community, from the Treaty Rome in 1957.Since the creation of the European Community, this link has not been diminished, however, by reason of at least two factors. Swiss federalism is on permanent display in Brussels and Bern. And the factor: the dialectic of negotiation with the EU, which also includes the laborious construction of a Greater Geneva. The Brussels-Geneva axis remains an unlikely one, but nevertheless one felt by the community experience on their territory by way of international organisations. An effect reinforced in some way through the cooperation-competition of the two capitals, by European integration and multilateral technical globalisation, through community organisations on the one hand and UN agencies on the other. 31
3.
Living in Geneva a SHORT HISTORY of the territory 32 Living in Geneva: a SHORT HISTORY of the territory
Living in Geneva: a short history of the territory
In his book on the contemporary city, La ville des flux (The City of Flows), Fayard 2013, Olivier Mongin examines the concept of housing that he defines anthropologically. Living in place not only means occupying a place to live in the domestic sense, but refers to a broader context. The inhabitant of an agglomeration certainly resides in their individual or family home. (In Geneva home is highly individual). He also inhabits the whole town, which can become a city, in the political sense. The inhabitant therefore appropriates the context. The reference to the text is justified, because for the inhabitant the city is a set of usages, a code giving access and meaning. In this regard, it is similar to reading (text, hypertext, intertextuality and context). Making up part of the inhabited space are: the site, landscapes, neighbourhoods, monuments, squares and public places and professional or residential buildings. This requires that they be intentionally developed and arranged. In the best case they become common places meshing together with the social life of the city: living together is both private and public. In Geneva as in other Swiss cities, squares are being redeveloped to (re)become public and especially shared, just as some industrial buildings are being converted into residential homes or museums. Living (inhabiting) thus refers to the complementarity between inside the home and outside it, in a space that is urban in the sense that it is part of the exchanges and of civil participation, starting with the debate on spatial planning itself. The habitat thus refers to a town planning but also to a social and political organisation of participation that animates living together. They both allow the creation of a common narrative that is embedded in the street, the architecture, the monumentality and the mobility within a territory that is for people to create and to remain there, inside and out.
The historical milestones
In Geneva the story of the territory was established back in the Middle Ages thanks to the strategic position of the city, upstream of the Rhone and at the foot of the Alps. Before the Reformation, the fairs were originally the original source for a city that communicated, negotiated and thus invented the core of its identity and the seed of autonomy between the powers: France, the Holy Roman Empire, the Italian principalities, the Netherlands and the Mediterranean.
With the Reformation was born the true personality of the republic and its State, now separate from the other and integrated into a kind of reformed International that goes from Britain to the north, to Italy in the south and to the Lutherans of the North and East. According to the historical narrative, the city was modelled both by its territorial narrowness and its religious choices. And yet an open city, as soon as it welcomed coreligionists from the “Refuge” (Protestants) by simultaneously erecting housing and jobs to accommodate them and defensive walls against the Catholic princes. The institutions of the Ancien Regime in Geneva were born and were strengthened around the Reformed faith and a dominant patrician class, strongly linked to the religion but also to trading and banking.
Between the 17th and 19th centuries, an artisan class arose, together with the growth of the factory, then industry and modern banking, while the wealth of the Geneva hinterland provided for the city’s supply, and its territorial extension upon the entrance of the canton Living in Geneva: a SHORT HISTORY of the territory 33
into Switzerland. With this decisive turn taken by the history of the city and its territory, the fundamental elements of the territory asserted themselves, and imprinted and reinforced by the population and its institutions, which would give the city-state its geopolitical uniqueness and longstanding collective identity.
These fundamentals are two in number. The continued narrowness of the cantonal territory, to which no political outcome has been given to date. Basically the geopolitical hinterland between Jura and Salève only partially belongs to the city. But foreign powers recognise the solidarity of Geneva with its hinterland and even its demographic and economic dominance, with agriculture above all. From this stems the importance of borders with their dual character of enclosure and passage between the city and its vicinity. According to times or the moment as we are seeing today, we will simultaneously have sanctuary and asylum or otherwise walls and locking out. This dialectic is both one of the heart (solidarity with refugees) and one of economic reason. Free trade and the autonomy of the city are set up to last. Meanwhile, closure reflects an isolation that affects communications and in the first instance transport. The current isolation of Geneva, at the farthest end of Switzerland, matches to the former isolation, where instead Geneva held the French enclave within the territory of the Swiss who were inter-linked in a Confederation. It is reflected on the habitat according to the vagaries of an insufficient internal and a sometimes-dreaded external demographics, as recently seen with the influx of people living at the border and of foreign workers.
It is precisely this demography which forms the second foundation, inseparable from the first. Ever since theR eformation, Geneva has faced the influx of coreligionists and later other foreign, like-minded sympathisers. The Ancien Regime in Geneva would fight on this issue of overcrowding through differentiated statutes, divided between the moral duty of solidarity on the one hand, and the anxiety-producing constraints of sharing jobs and wealth on the other. The habitat will inevitably be affected by this with the gradual opening of the walls and the development of housing for the newcomers. By raising houses and opening new neighbourhoods, if need be.
Living (inhabiting) then means joining oneself into this city of severe moral governance body and soul, while pursuing an aggressive industry and a supercilious independence that is none other than the civil liberty of the Ancients, (that of the city). Inhabiting also means finding one’s place in an increasingly individualized urban setting, as is was in the Reformed faith in the uniqueness of the individual before God. Close family housing in existing neighbourhoods where the dominant classes and industrious people gradually accumulated, without separating from each other.
T he French Revolution
Geneva participated in the Revolution by way of its thinkers and the early insurrections of his people, as well as by way of the evolution of its institutions. The Republic of Geneva became a cited model in the debate of the Enlightenment, while at the same time remaining a stronghold of minority Protestantism in a still Catholic and later an imperial Napoleonic environment. With the Restoration following the 19th century, Geneva grew even closer to the Swiss and eventually joined the new Confederation, soon driven by the industrial and radical revolution. Regarding the habitat, the city became aware of its urban character by welcoming refugees 34 Living in Geneva: a SHORT HISTORY of the territory
Geneva in 1685 after Protestant Refuge Living in Geneva: a SHORT HISTORY of the territory 35
Model of the City of Geneva today 36 Living in Geneva: a SHORT HISTORY of the territory
of new ideas, including those of liberalism, nationalism and progressivism, right up until the world wars of the 20th century. Industry and banking, which by mid-century emerged as the main economic driver of city-state, led the way to its modernisation. The walls were opened onto the countryside, carefully preserved. Transports to Switzerland took definite shape and the now French Savoyard and Gex hinterland became consolidated. Carouge was set up as a market and then as a twin city of Geneva at its gates. The new districts formed in a suburb that was tightly knit and would soon administratively merge with the old city and its communes. On the eve of the two world wars, the flow of political refugees continued. AfterWW II, it turned into a welcome flow of “International” refugees. Adapting itself this new population, the canton of Geneva would soon lend its functional space in the buildings of the League of Nations, while continuing to feel the strain of its smallness: the isolation, the stacking of habitats on top of each other and protectionist identity-related reactions as before.
Post-war period
To date, this has mainly manifested itself by developments affecting the habitat and living together. The post-war period saw a rebirth of an international order around the UN and the invention of modern multilateral diplomacy carried out in part in Geneva. Many international officials came to settle in the canton, in the service of the UN agencies that established themselves there. They vary in number and skills depending on the development of UN agencies and their complicated array of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). There are also new European migrants, from Italians to Kosovars to the Spanish and the Portuguese, to African, Asian or Middle Eastern newcomers flowing into Geneva in search of accommodation or shelter. Most are survivors of severe economic or political stalemates in their country. They want to establish themselves in Switzerland as soon as possible. As to the French border, 90,000 of them have come from Savoie and Ain, and they continue to contribute to a large extent to the canton, whose endogenous fertility is on the decrease. The economic and political circles envision the prospect of a million inhabitants for the canton. For its part, the territory remains stable, although conceptually reworked by its land use development plans across the city and the urban area or even the region, based on European examples of trans- boundary cooperation. Today housing has progressively become rare as the population has grown. Living (inhabiting) remains an urban planning of sharing, without interruption and without social ghettoization within shared neighbourhoods and spaces. 37
4. Living in the canton 38 Living in the canton
Living in the canton
Today the city is delineated right up to the historical limits of the canton under three territorial forms for simplicity’s sake: the countryside and its villages, the old city centre, cities and new neighbourhoods. The centre makes up more than half of the canton, including those neighbourhoods historically developed since the 18th century: the Rues Basses and the docks, Champel Florissant-Malagnou, and the Eaux-Vives. On the right bank: The Pâquis, the Gare, the Servette, Saint-Jean, La Praille and the Acacias outside Carouge. The city limits are no longer those of the historic town. Urban planning and public transport are blurring the boundaries between city and canton, which complicates the dual government of Geneva, to the extent that it is both necessary and often redundant. A good half of the cantonal population lives a life and urban condition based on the same parameters as elsewhere. These parameters are transport and roads plus the seasonal congestion of the public places: car parks, parks and docks hotly disputed in private ownership. Yet the major cultural institutions are run by the city alone, even though all Genevois benefit from them.O ther parameters are the civil separation of the residents according to their legal status and their communal environment and the changing safety of the streets and neighbourhoods. Transport in Geneva is improving to the extent that the city centre is fully accessible by foot or by bike, while the rest of the canton is served by public transport. The car still reigns, but as a transit vehicle for coming from or going out farther.
Is the quality of the Geneva spatial setting – especially aesthetically – a parameter of living together? Most definitely, if we consider the motivations of those who come here and especially for those who remain. Geneva is also an international logo: harbour, water jet, Old Town and flower-lined docks, all which the authorities are committed to maintaining as part of its identity-bound heritage and a means of promotion. The countryside, rural and ecological lung of the canton is part of the same heritage. Of course, the old Genevans are more attached to them than the newcomers, insofar as they are nearby if not daily users of these amenities. But the major political controversies with key referendums such as the recent one over the Museum of Art and History are largely cosmetic. In these debates there’s only the native Genevans to proclaim themselves to be the arbiters of good taste. In this sense, as in all modern and developing cities, “the beautiful” is certainly a criterion of living together.
The canton’s contemporary dilemma is housing. The mismatch between supply and demand has been a chronic one for twenty or thirty years. It has become even more acute over the past ten years, despite the ongoing construction effort. The population is increasing while the territory remains static, with the exception of the canton’s restricted territorial flow valves towards Vaud and neighbouring France. These won’t go without setting off tax disputes. The Geneva State is barely able to find lands on which to build and the financing for affordable buildings; the private sector pays lip service to these, but doesn’t build enough of them. Rents and prices of construction are high and there is little low-rent housing. The administration multiplies the obstacles and loopholes. All in all housing has become a major concern of the population. Space issues: land use, housing and habitat diversity between landlords and tenants, mobility and transport, and cooperation and competition of the administrative authorities in the territory are the dominant political issues of the city. The project of a Greater Geneva overcoming trans-boundary governance problems has yet to find its political footing. . Portrait 39
Daniel Glinz a Confederate who could pass through walls
With his wide-brim felt hat and where he acquired a good knowledge of year-round three-piece suit, he Urdu. Japanese language and culture were, looks like a globetrotter, or Anglo- moreover, the greatest acquisition of his Saxon travel writer. Daniel Glinz is youth. Just like his predecessor, Nicolas primarily a polyglot passer through Bouvier, whom he would befriend later on, walls, a travel guide in his spare he was an insatiable seeker of the arts and time, a journalist and a writer. of Japanese manners, travelling all over the Born in Geneva to parents from St archipelago, received in all quarters. He took Gallen, he finished all his schooling in the a language course in China with his Japanese Grand-Saconnex neighbourhood where his wife to understand the confrontation of two father, called to Geneva by an international major Asian powers. During this period organisation, bought a house in the sixties he wrote many articles, including for the soon after his arrival from German-speaking Journal de Genève, as well as two novels Switzerland. imbued with his Asian experience. He also started a notable career as a guide for Daniel Glinz is pure sugar Genevois, with cultural trips throughout Asia on behalf of a light indefinable accent, except for a a high-end tourism agency. He’s interested barely audible hint of Swiss German. In this in international politics, but he naturally neighbourhood of Grand-Saconnex already subordinates this to cultural history and to earmarked for International Geneva, Daniel mentalities. Glinz pursued an unhindered schooling, enriched by many foreign friends with whom There followed intense years as an ICRC he played football and learned languages. delegate in Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and after There are among them Italians, Spaniards, a long return to headquarters, in training Middle Easterners, Asians and even some assignments, and then in Colombia. He Swiss. It is this that would give him a taste for meanwhile married a Colombian woman cultures and for human diversity, prefigured and they have two children. He thus has the by that of Geneva. opportunity to improve his Spanish, already previously equated with football in the Grand This Genevan Confederate still maintained Saconnex. Today he works for a semi-public his command of German and dialect, but in office dedicated to training executives and his teens he was swept up by the call of the officers for NGOs in Switzerland. He shares open sea and its temptations. He finished his some of his deep internationalism with them. university studies mainly in the Netherlands, Geneva is his homeland. He is attached to it where he specialised in learning Chinese, for its mosaic of diversity and the opportunity in addition to Dutch and English, the latter to continue to travel around the world. being the vernacular language of the Grand- Saconnex together with Spanish. His travels began at that time, since, matching his words with actions, he would spend a few years in Japan, followed by India and Pakistan, 40 Living in the canton
Countryside
What does the fate of the rural area offer us by way of emblematic of examples? The patricians of Geneva – the ruling class during the 18th and 19th centuries – were accustomed to living in the countryside during the summer. Calling these estates by the plural “the countrysides” came into use to refer to a large portion of the agricultural space. In winter these patricians migrated to the city centre, in apartments. Thus the countryside tells a story of living together going back over two centuries. Here is a contemporary example: inherited in 1950 by a Genevan, the estate consisted of an 18th-century mansion, heritage landmarked on the list of old mansions, two farmhouses plus a courtyard with an adjacent garage for rural cartage. All on a left-bank territory of twenty hectares originally. The fields extend in the direction of Salève over ten hectares planted with wood, grain and a little vineyard area up to until the limit of a “nant” (a Genevan word for a stream on the property line). In the sixties the State took two hectares of the land along the wooded border for its own needs by way of a paid expropriation with a view to one day build a water reservoir. The old house was restored and modernised in 1970 by its owner. Because of its construction as a protected heritage site and despite its area, it and the adjacent farmhouses remain difficult to divide to meet the needs of several families. The fields are leased out for tenant farming under threat –constantly deferred by the State – of a zoning declassification as a villas area. The Geneva countryside must remain agricultural despite the population pressure of the canton.
One of the farmhouses is partly occupied by the farmer. The other building adjacent building on the farmyard, passed on by the last owner to members of his family, was part of a development of four family apartments with gardens in the countryside in the 60s. It now has seven to eight homes.
Over thirty years, the cohabitation on a property that remains that of a sole tenant and a principal owner has been working harmoniously. The residents know each other and respect the contractual division of the private and public areas, such as the access areas and courtyards. The entire agricultural estate, largely confined to the farmer, is, with the agreement of the owner and the latter, open to Sunday walkers and to other, more or less, allowed users of this green lung of the city. Living together, however, has not come without some friction. The owner manages the relations of the three categories of residents with the farmer and his family: the estate owner and the owners and tenants of the farmyard apartments. The farmer, protected by legislation and the commune, as well as by a farm lease without financial compensation on his part, often acts as master of the place, not just over the agricultural part of the estate, reduced to ten hectares, but over its annexes too: barn and farmyard as well as private gardens and a strip of forest on the property line, assiduously monitored by the Department of the Interior (landscapes and forests). The main owner and farmer are inserted in the tenancy relationship, now become a minority one, in a canton that cares about its natural environment, but which is suffering from the decrease in rural farms tenancies. The former is ultimately responsible for the estate. He periodically intervenes to contain the natural territorial expansionism of a rural person who does not pay him rent. As for the apartment tenants, they sometimes suffer from the same anachronism, they who are in immediate contact with a farm that needs space for its equipment. For their part, they lead a city-dweller lifestyle, with their cars nibbling away at the common spaces just as in the city. Among the tenants come along in recent years are now international aliens for whom the relationship to the Swiss countryside is not obvious. The neighbours sometimes go through Living in the canton 41
some fractious times and don’t always get on well together, but they put up with this situation created by the urban encroachment on the countryside. At the cantonal level, the land management is having its setbacks in the housing crisis but also its success in maintaining an agriculture whose advances have been evident, especially in the area of Geneva wine.
An urban neighbourhood: the Eaux-Vives
To take a second emblematic example, B. lives in the Eaux-Vives neighbourhood not far from the lake, on a relatively quiet but narrow street. He lives in a four-room apartment with his wife and two young children. The rent is old, controlled, but unsubsidised. He walks or cycles for getting about for business or other errands. In the neighbourhood there are a lot of cars and rental car parks. The Eaux-Vives neighbourhood is well equipped with shops, with nurseries, schools, doctors and emergency centres, ethnic restaurants and leisure facilities and even artisans. The Eaux-Vives, like the Pâquis neighbourhood, is characterised by the youth and linguistic diversity of its residents. There is thus a mixed population that shares and participates in all the common areas. Neighbourly relations are close as the population is dense, and they generally pull together in caring for their children. More rarely there is irritation over the decentralised housing spaces such as stairs, elevators, basements and other attics, and about the noise of the streets. Life there revolves around the children. For as long as they are little, they need round the clock watching, which comes at the expense of great professional sacrifice. Happily, the State nurseries and other D“ ay care mums” facilities, kindergartens and playrooms provide some relief. These are common areas but not quite public, to the extent that they cost something and accessible on a waiting list basis. So there is some State involvement in the care of the littlest. The schools, and the cantonal sports and recreation departments take care of the older children.
When you visit the rue des Eaux-Vives at any time you will hear Spanish and English, and other languages less noticeable in the narrow majority of francophones. The positive interaction of living together is seen in the buildings and around the schools. Generally, neighbours know each other more than elsewhere, they do more than just pass each other on the stair; invitations to go for walks and outings of all kinds are common. Foreigners and Swiss natives share a common condition, which is not one of great affluence. The youth commune of Eax-Viviens directs them to housing and similar recreational resources. Under these conditions, the street and perhaps even more so the docks, to which we must assimilate the parks and promenades, are places for sports or festive gatherings for this population which does not want for common areas and services, maintained by the city. In summer the docks and the harbour in particular offer a breath of fresh air near the Geneva countryside. In the schools, the buildings, the streets and the public spaces there’s a mix of ethnicities that often foster the integration of Geneva’s diversity. Native Swiss and Genevans, minority internationals, and historic communities together form a middle class with aspirations of upward mobility and often of Swissification through naturalisation, but not exclusively so. And yet the residents of Eux-Vives are characterised by an elective and spontaneous cosmopolitanism (it is not imposed), but one that does not exclude double or triple nationality.
In the case of the Pâquis, the neighbourhood serves as place subject to altercations, street assaults, burglaries and even violence to many, due mainly to drug trafficking, according to the ore or less sustained vigilance by the police. There are two realities, more pronounced 42 Living in the canton
elsewhere for the Pâquis. The first concerns the legal and statistical impact of these misdeeds. It has varied over the years and from the Department of Justice and Police, which manage the prevention/repression and keep updated statistics. Now police patrols and entry codes on building doors and post boxes are becoming increasingly common. Another aspect is the debate about the lack of security. It affects every city in the world, large and small, including Geneva. It’s a question of real crime on the one hand and the perception of that crime on the other. The debate is linked in part to differences and not to class since the poor suffer from it as much as do the rich, but also to the illusion of the “dangerous classes” maintained by the privileged classes. The latter respond with a desire to separate. They seek to barricade their property and their families into affluent ghettos, like gated communities or another form of defensive urban planning used by discriminating neighbourhoods. There are practically none of these ghettos in Switzerland and in Geneva, but alongside to the security reality, the feeling of insecurity exists, particularly among the international residents, who express a very specific professional sensitivity in this area. Diplomats sometimes inherit this illusion from more perilous previous posts they’ve held earlier in their careers. Furthermore, in Switzerland income inequalities are also widening is the perception of the dangers. This is not to say that Geneva is completely safe and that the debate about insecurity is unfounded. With globalization, urban crime and the debate about insecurity are on the uptick and are spreading like an oil stain. In Geneva the debate sometimes goes beyond the real insecurity.
Meyrin, a new city
Meyrin is a municipality on the right bank belatedly attached to the canton after being occupied successively by the House of Savoy, the Austrians, and then by the Bernese before being reunited into Geneva in 1816. A rustic village surrounded by rural people and fairly well-to-do farmers, it remained that way during the 19th century, before becoming a dependency of Geneva and progressively urbanised to absorb the surplus Geneva population. It was in the pre-war years that the first residential buildings went up, whilst between the sixties and the eighties, the first large complexes of a satellite city were built at the same time as a communal autonomy befitting a true city developed.
The late attachment to Geneva remains remarkable for significantly-sized territory bordering France, Pays de Gex in the Ain. The somewhat subordinate function exercised by the city in the canton, is underlined by the name as the first satellite city of the canton and of Switzerland. Besides the Savoyard and former Gessiens, the commune has received Confederates attracted to the nascent prosperity of the canton since the 19th century. These Confederates, become Genevans populate the current electoral lists and the administrative council of the city. Two other more recent historical elements of Meyrin are firstly the reception of international organisations, or the housing of their umbrella organisations to be precise. It culminated with the arrival of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), straddling the border for both its infrastructure and its habitat. The Geneva Cointrin Airport, which is part of the commune, also dates back the same wave of internationalisation. On the other hand, even in the 20th century, Meyrin gradually received a considerable number of foreigners and this was in this commune in particular that would play a role in contemporary Geneva’s hospitality. Added to the Swiss Confederates and internationals were added the cohort of post-war migrants: Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese. The Latin Americans in their turn were fleeing Living in the canton 43
the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone in the 70s, followed by the oppressed of Central and Eastern Europe, some Hungarians and Czechs followed by the those from the Balkans: chiefly Kosovars and Albanians. Today, some of those disillusioned with the failure of the Arab Spring are making their way to Meyrin.
The cultural background in Meyrin remains resolutely Swiss, in the sense that diversity is integrated, perhaps more deeply than elsewhere in federal institutions, who reserve a prominent place to the hospitality of the commune. Therefore the fundamental traits of Switzerland are developing there a special way: urbanisation and industrialisation in Geneva’s industrial area, almost entirely transferred to this part of the right bank, in an industrial zone. Secondly, the almost rainbow-like diversity of a population made up of internal and then foreign migrants. Rather modest initially, but dynamic, often well educated, this population is in need of settlement. Naturalised or foreign, the successive arrivals will present the commune and its authorities with a training in living together, in an increasingly unique and autonomous way. And in a prosperous way as well.
You can now get to Meyrin by tram, which means that other Genevans can get there, making Meyrin as close to the city of Geneva as it is to the airport and its European destinations. Public transport has not only ended the isolation of the residents of Meyrin, but also their conception of living in a fragmented environment, both in terms of their working life as well as in their sense of belonging. This belonging is attached to Geneva and to Switzerland and, beyond that, to an upcoming Greater Geneva, without prejudice to the Meyrin spirit.
What is it made if, as people think, this living together in Meyrin creates their identity. In the beginning was the neighbourhood within the buildings. The large buildings were built during the sixties. Architects influenced by Le Corbusier care about the community spirit sensible result from inclusive and functional buildings. But in the 80s and 90s, the buildings were the topic of political and social objections, as in Lignon and Avanchets. The French example of suburban council flats was raised to point out the threat of dis-integration of the people who lived there. Dis-integration of the young people in particular, because of a threat of sometimes ethnic-based alienation and of unemployment. The current mayor, Pierre Tschudi, of the Green Party, says that it has not happened, because the creative social diversity has been there from the start, with the differences in age, backgrounds, income levels and career opportunities. As in other communes, a network of spontaneous solidarities was created over the years. These solidarities have fostered mutual tolerance between cultures and finally the diversity claimed by the residents. A telling example: the shared use and maintenance of common areas. This is about being attentive to the state of the common washing machine, to the lighting in the basements, to the care of the green spaces and to waste management. More generally, it’s to do with a fundamental social solidarity that also dovetails with a concern for the greenery and an attachment to the countryside that continues to define the commune. This works because, as the mayor of Meyrin, who is very involved in the contemporary construction of new housing sites in Champs Fréchet says: “There are among the political or economic migrants a need for proper order, often contrasted with the chaos and the arbitrariness of authoritarian regimes they are coming from, which ruled without administering”. This spontaneous organisation of the cohesion can also be traced back, if one will, to the Swiss household model (German speaking for the most part) which is quickly demanded by both tradition and capillary action, even if at times the fundamentalism of the “clean and tidy” can try the patience of the newcomers. 44 Living in the canton
In order for the spirit of the old village to develop on this urban soil, many associations for training in languages and cultures sprung up, starting with French. The women of CERN set the tone of this civility beginning in the sixties, creating women’s group meetings and counselling for children, including on the model of the Anglo-Saxon universities they had attended. In their turn, the Latinos created a club in the 1980s, and the Albanians and Kosovars did the same a decade later. These spontaneous associations, before any intervention on the part of the commune and the canton, were related to practical issues, primarily around women, children, schools, adult education, meetings and cultural events and festivals. The associations operate without any topics being off limits or having to do with nationals from other countries. Where drew the Latinos together, for example, was sharing a common history of oppression by dictatorships, which twenty years on has given way to the practical organisation of living together in Switzerland. What results is a form of communal conviviality that is not ethnicity-based. It’s all that people want to live and be part of building a city, on the new territory they have chosen and which in turn does right by them.
The second stage is the consideration of this movement by the commune and of its encouragement. Municipal councillors and successive mayors encourage initiatives whose centre of gravity is at the Forum de Meyrin, one of the canton’s leading theatres. Without taking them over, the municipality sometimes partially funds projects which then multiply, like the Garden of the Missing of South America or the Alpine Botanical Garden, now taken over by a private individual, a former owner of the land. These official encouragements also promote cultural venues and events. They help create a spirit of Meyrin that is at once cosmopolitan and intercultural, ecological and participatory. Citizen participation in the sense of a democracy that is not only direct and representative (as it is throughout the Swiss context). The society takes initiatives and validates them. There is no elaborate ideology behind this conviviality, but a form of coexistence of differences approved of by all parties concerned. And one which reflects the current composition of the communal councils.
The proximity of the buildings, public places, schools and transport of children, multiple groups, including languages, festivals cultures and communities, all create leadership. Encouragement from the commune and the Cantonal State, thirdly, ensure consistency of spontaneous efforts with community management. They create or recognise the leaders in in the associations and projects of the society, which is a form of empowerment.
The empowerment experienced since the 90s in American municipalities and neighbourhoods, corresponds to the liberal trend of the withdrawal of the State, away from the administered communities, in this case, by Democratic administrations. There, social thought renewed itself from the bottom up (under President Clinton). The community scope, its leadership and its projects, usually in daily areas of municipal life (security, management of space, schooling for children, assistance to the poor) emanates from civil society on its own initiative. They are deployed without obstruction on the part of elected officials but with their financial participation and under their political control. In the end, the state authority (State or municipality) validates the civil initiative in the fields of everyday life, without commanding or managing it. 45
5.
living in the canton Circles and communities 46 47 48 Living in the canton: Circles and communities
Circles and communities
Of all the countries of Europe, Switzerland is one that receives the most foreigners in its territory. They are estimated to be 23% of the population. In Geneva the proportion is almost twice as high: almost half of the population comes from somewhere else. If one were to add to this figure those who have no more than one generation of Swiss behind them, the percentage would be even more pronounced. And that’s without counting the part-time border residents, who come from nearby France every day on the order of 81,000. The diversity of the canton is held up as an approval in principle, to the extent that it is old and where the social cohesion is deemed suitable. However, it is also the bearer of problems of hospitality and integration through its housing and employment, especially since the Swiss federal referendum on migrants of February 2014. The multiplicity of identities and cultures inspires a welcoming attitude, but it also sets off arguments amongst Geneva residents. It causes a recurrent political protest within the canton as it does in other Swiss cantons. Some political movements deplore an internationalist drift in Geneva. There is a certain degree of envy that seeps into this internal criticism. It also shows that the diversity of the Genevois remains constituent of the canton. It is between the integration of this diversity and it conflictive nature that lets us perceive and appreciate the cantonal living together.
There are a dozen large human groups of different national or regional origins. These are, in order of arrival in Switzerland over the last century: Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Latin emigrants from the southern cone of South America, the former Yugoslavians broken up into seven countries by the splintering of the country, sub-Saharan Africans, North Africans and people of the Middle East, which raise the question of Islam. Not to mention the national neighbours the Confederates. Imperceptible by their naturalization within Geneva’s population and yet present in numbers as indicated by the surnames in the phone book.
One question arises: to what extent do these groups of people, long-established and just setting up, form communities with an internal solidarity or even as minorities recognised as such by the authorities? Are they not rather simple associative groups or even informal circles of weak cohesion? Geneva’s population is deemed to be inclusive and integrative but it remains compartmentalised. It actually integrates without losing its uniqueness. One becomes in Genevan and Swiss, without necessarily having your own identity and relational references affected, which is a feature of modern cities. In modern urban reality, difference is a treasure but the practice of anonymity is a virtue. The daily commerce between citizens free of stigma or repression of their otherness, this is the best practice in major cities. That is why in Geneva and elsewhere we hear people complain about the ambient indifference - Swiss and foreigners for example sometimes pretend they’re living on separate planets. And then others delight in the individual freedom that flows from such social distancing.
In addition to the origins of language, religion, ethnicity or nationality, there are other sources for Genevan sociability: gender, age, and professional occupation or leisure. Circles of diplomats or businessmen, international clubs, trade associations of independent professionals and artists, professional unions by industry or sector, cultural and sporting leisure groups, literary circles, charitable or idealistic NGO associations, especially in the international field and Rotary-type service clubs. Some of these circles are specifically dedicated at welcoming foreigners, sometimes in public-private partnerships with the cantonal State. The latter has become aware in recent decades of the human and economic asset that International Geneva Living in the canton: Circles and communities 49
presents. Alongside the Confederation, there are new resources dedicated to this within International Geneva by the International Foundation for International Organisations and by HEID and the University. Finally social networks in turn are creating new forms of sociability, a kind of virtual living together.
The circles function as associations or clubs, which means they recruit their members based on an area of interest, according to specific conditions. Yet they show a certain degree of openness to stakeholders from related fields, even across the range of Geneva’s diversity. These associations are actors in Genevan civil society. Just as their Brazilian cousins are allowed into the Portuguese circles, foreign barristers passing through Geneva correspond with the Geneva Bar Association and other cantonal legal bars. For their part, the service clubs are open to the public on the occasion of certain events. The nebula of International Geneva, considered to be entrenched on its lakeshore, maintains close relations with many indigenous Genevans, beginning with NGOs, students, teachers, leaders, the local officials of political parties and company executives. The gatherings on the Place des Nations, often devoted to national events, are often inclusive occasions for solidarity. The associative richness thus brings together a large part of the inhabitants from near and far, because of the population’s diverse backgrounds and interests. Not to mention the popular festivals that produce diversity: the Escalade, the festival of Geneva Patriots, open to foreigners due to its symbolism of fierce civil independence; the Fête de la musique, and the theatre, music and dance festivals. Community life is creates a dense network of relationships for a very modest- sized European city. Through the influence of International Geneva, its scope of interests and issues touch upon most global issues. This can be measured by the number and diversity of NGOs surrounding the major intergovernmental organisations. Thus, the community circles are not merely tangential to each other; they largely overlap, as do the identities themselves, bringing together polycentric individuals. Community life extends the social relations of the individual as well, in the form of outings with friends and invitations. Thanks to the narrowness of the territory and people’s proximity to each other, this social life is relatively more active than in a major city. It extends along the Lake to Lausanne, on the Swiss side.
An historical community: the Portuguese
This community came into being beginning in the sixties through relatively massive and family migration, mainly for economic reasons. The group thinned out through a return movement with the Carnation Revolution of 1974, followed by democratic reform until the end of the last century. Currently immigration has picked up since the 2000’s. There were 1,605 Portuguese immigrants in 2015, and 37,388 residents established in 2014. Sometimes it is the same people re-immigrating, finding their livelihoods once more threatened by the global economic crisis, which is acute in Portugal. In Geneva the community, since it calls itself that, is considered to be hard working and one which seeks to integrate. Considered peaceful in the political and social realm, it has shown itself to be an enthusiastic stakeholder in Swiss democracy and in harmonious labour relations. And this is the case, even though many Portuguese start off by working in physically demanding professions in industry and construction.
The Portuguese of Geneva apply different forms of solidarity amongst themselves, by preserving the link to Portugal and their nationality, by teaching the mother tongue to 50 Living in the canton: Circles and communities
the children and by forming associations which organise cultural events and festivals. La Librairie Camoes is one of the cultural institutions active in the canton. The group forms a vibrant and patriotic community, trips back to Portugal for holidays are a habit, even after the acquisition of dual nationality. The Portuguese of Geneva maintain continuous links with the Portuguese consulate in Geneva and the embassy in Bern. Sport, especially football, is a played and followed and is a widespread passion in the community. However, some have complained that they are not community-spirited enough, for in the image of the mother Lusitanian country, political divisions between them are constant. They are not a minority in the legal sense, insofar as they adapt to Swiss institutions and the Swiss political culture, in spite of social legislation, which sometimes seems to them to be insufficient and in spite of their non-membership of the Confederation to the EU, which indirectly places them at a disadvantage.
Sympathy has been expressed to them. Swiss political organisations hailed the end of the authoritarian and colonial rule in the Carnation Revolution in 1974 and the transition to democracy, now anchored in contemporary Europe. Switzerland and Portugal are similar in their geographical location, landlocked for one of them, on the edge of the continent for the other. They are also similar in their democratic institutions, their respective patriotic feeling and the presence of a large community of Portuguese in Switzerland, which came from a well-integrated second generation of Secondos. Some Swiss find in Portugal their professional vocation or their artistic inspiration in the exuberant richness of its landscape and history. This creates a feeling of closeness to which the sentimental Portuguese heritage of saudade is no stranger. Saudade truly plays upon the bittersweet feeling of familiarity and distance, belonging and being wrenched away felt by the Portuguese in Switzerland, by turns for one country or the other.
Africans and Latinos
The Portuguese are close to other emigrant groups in Geneva through geographical and historical ties. Africans and Latin Americans specifically. The former have a completely contiguous historical tie to Portugal. On the one hand, because the Lusitanian Old World “discovered” and then colonised the African continent to the west and then to the east. The memory or legend of the Portuguese, that of King John, remains alive in Ethiopia and Zanzibar, Mozambique and South Africa. On the other hand, Portugal has always mixed in with metropolitan France and its overseas territories with North Africans as well as with those south of the Sahara, to the Retornados from the emancipated colonies since the 1970s. From this point of view, the Portuguese are nearly as much of a mixed race as their Brazilian cousins.
In Geneva the community that has possibly made its mark most directly in the post-war period is that of the Latin Americans. There are quite a few Swiss in Latin America and among them francophones who surf on their language, a vehicle for spreading their cultural influence in the subcontinent since the 18th century. As for Geneva, Latinos would become visible there beginning in the early 1980s, when the Southern Cone countries rid themselves of the latest (to date) military or civilian dictatorships. At the same time, they sparked a significant political emigration to France and to the Lake Geneva region. We thus see Latinos forming in Switzerland national and then transnational exile associations, which the Swiss authorities Portrait 51
Vitor do Prado the diplomat of the emerging world
He made such sojourns and done but there had been an incessant waltz of such work at the World Trade raw materials for export elsewhere for Organization (WTO), that the centuries. This is reflected on the internal organisation of Member States politics of the country, which today are seems more his own than any undermined by scandals. It is reflected in other international official’s. international trade too, hence the highly He delights in visiting the sensitive presence of Brazil at the head renovated building of the former of the organization to act as mediator and headquarters of the International Labour creator of agreements between national or Organisation (ILO), flanked by a beautiful regional groups. glass building, relaxing in the legendary peace of Parc Barton with direct views of Do Prado likes Geneva and not just for his office and the harbour and the lake. A his work. You won’t get him to say a product of the best school of Latin American word against the canton, except for the diplomacy, the Brazilian Itamarati, (named qualification of Internationals, depriving after one of the first foreign ministers under officials, as it were, of their native the Brazilian Empire), Vitor do Prado has so homelands. In Geneva, besides his family, far spent most of his career Geneva, first as he has many friends in international circles an embassy counsellor at the permanent as well as among the Swiss. He remains Mission of Brazil, in charge of global trade, in close contact with the authorities of the and then as the right arm of Pascal Lamy, host country, the Confederation and the former Director General of the WTO. He now canton and City of Geneva, since he has holds the same position alongside Roberto successfully managed the issue of the Azevedo, the current Director General, a headquarters on the shores of the lake and near-colleague for Brazilian development, its ambitious renovation. He proudly shows lent, as he was, to the World Trade the great fresco bequeathed by the ILO, the Organization. In this capacity Do Prado has Brazil Conference Room and the Chinese been in the forefront of the negotiations, Garden, offered by the two countries. Of almost from the start of the WTO. He has an German origin by one of his grandfathers, he extraordinary familiarity with both the most speaks this language and others, including acute cases and the successes A native of French and English. His daughter did her São Paulo, the Brazilian megalopolis, he studies in Berlin. From the balcony of the is also the descendant of a family of coffee Lake Geneva region, is laid out the whole farmers in the State of São Paulo. The of Europe and its cultures with which it is plantation, now largely converted for sugar imbued. cane, produces ethanol for automobiles.
At the beginning of this century Brazil became one of the fastest emerging countries in the world. This meant growth and deep reforms in its economy and its agriculture in particular. The space is huge 52 Living in the canton: Circles and communities
politically moderate, according to the laws of refuge in force in Switzerland. After having long dealt with authoritarian regimes, including the Chilean, Brazilian, Chilean, Argentine and Uruguayan, in strict application of neutrality, the Swiss federal and cantonal authorities were pleased with the majority opinion on the end of the dictatorships, soon celebrated in culture and the arts, as well as by renewed diplomatic relations with the respective States.
Latin music, literature, cinema and visual arts strongly took root in Geneva, including at the University and in the international community. This culture nourished and was close to the alternative culture of the 1970s-80s.Then in its second generation, it got a foothold in the Geneva government with the Geneva State councillor Antonio Hodgers. So there are two unique contributions within the framework of the Genevan living together. The first is political. For the Swiss, this entails reconsidering the history of post-war Latin America and understanding the military episodes that marked the stifling of democratic tradition, often to the benefit of a purely economic liberalism, inspired byW ashington. To finally revise the phase of ousting the dictatorships of the Southern Cone. As for the political aspect of living together, this Latin culture strengthens the rise of Genevan parties who took up the humanist message of the newcomers after having campaigned for human rights in these countries and particularly for belatedly recognised indigenous peoples. They made it a part of their ideological inspiration: “Never again the oppression of the people.” Civil society and the international association scene (NGOs) immersed themselves in this atmosphere, which now includes the governance of the canton. The other contribution is cultural and social. Here a partial list we could cite would include the Forum de Meyrin, director Omar Porras, the festival Filmar en America Latina, the Jardin des disparus (Garden of the Disappeared) and the Raccard, a little reception centre the marginal people of Geneva, led by a naturalised Chilean, Miguel Norambuena. Finally football and the Brazilians carnival and Latin music.
Influence ofE nglish speakers
A group plays an important social role though often unnoticed, is that of the English speakers. Here, this is not a question of a common origin or religion but of a large cohort linked by language and lifestyles. This is so since the English language plays a central role of mediation in Geneva and Swiss diversity. Although they may not all be accomplished speakers, Genevan and native Swiss are making progress in that language and are using it more, generation after generation. Some tourists or passing guests do not realise that we speak anything else but English here in Switzerland, which has effectively become a vernacular language, out of necessity. This is what unites these speakers around a globally dominant language and around the concepts it conveys. The internationals are at the core of the English-speaking community, which is, no more than others, forms a lobby. They all speak English, at least as a second language. These include by way of their profession officers of multinational agencies and companies, NGO leaders and diplomats, but also many Swiss who have spent time in English-speaking countries and communicate in that language. The group thus shares resources thanks to the language and its universal professional range of use. The attention and the relatively recent interaction of the canton vis-à-vis this group, in essence an international UN community, rather than an English one, but the areas they cover are very similar. Clubs, foundations and associations of all kinds, social media naturally open to native Swiss, form the network of solidarity with this community. Living in the canton: Circles and communities 53
Of necessity therefore English is the media of the world. The cultural impact of English in a period of growing interdependence of societies has been increasing for thirty years through technological, economic and cultural globalisation. This globalisation first invaded the fields of knowledge, since scientific publications are in made in English. Furthermore, English has become a lifestyle providing the words and codes of a mass culture. As such, the language first affects young people through the means of communication: radio, DC s/ DVDs, television and social networks. Visuals and sounds in their original English version are a fact for a large part of the youth world. Now what the Americans defend in terms of intellectual property and international trade is not only the linguistic vehicle in its acquired dominance, but the contents that are formulated with the conceptual tools forged in the language. Since the generation of Johnny Hallyday, much loved around Lake Geneva, it’s not just the music that borrows American rhythms but the words are pronounced in French songs with a “US” accent. The relational content of one generation is influenced by it, to which the way of life sets the tone again through technology, new or less new, from marketing and the products these technologies offer. And what of fiction, novels, pictures, sceneries, films, serials and commercials? They adopt the rhythm, the breathtaking dramatic tension within a short and presentist timeframe. These are at the forefront the “stories” from a shortened and summary History, spiced with humour and other recipes for “entertainment” recipes, which involve much more than simple formatting. These products are universal because they are bought and imitated everywhere. They are adopted by a youth as a way to feel, to express themselves, to socialize. In Geneva as much if not more so than elsewhere.
Scientific and cultural creativity among other areas of social life and thus ofliving together is affected and often conveyed by the English speakers of Geneva or beyond, in a relationship that has clearly become one linked to Americanness. The American way of breaking down religions is two-fold. By multiplying the use of newly manufactured spiritualities, which are still exotic in Switzerland. For example: New Age spiritualism, Californian Transhumanism, promising immortality. Even more so by missionary hyper- modernity of evangelical denominations, now located everywhere from the Bible Belt in the US and sometimes as far as in the very heart of the historic Protestant churches in Europe. Christian evangelism is characterized by a crude and strongly moral-behavioural theology quite distant from its origins in the historical Protestantism of Geneva. It unfolds in the form of fusional socialization rituals, which produce the community of believers in places arranged for this purpose. Political life is in turn affected by Americanization. In the emphasis placed on communication and new technologies. They promulgate a political or electoral campaign in Geneva over a range of traditional “dot com” measures, relayed or triggered by social networks.
But anglophilia mainly affects the arts and management knowledge. After the sixties a number of business management schools opened, including some within the Lake Geneva region universities. There, one works and thinks in English. The company, its strategic aspirations and its administrative practices slip into the terms and concepts of American management. The undisputed temples of this business administration are in America: on the East Coast or in California. The development of managerial thinking there takes shape based on the evolution of the liberal environment. The “Management” – in English – develops quality training in Swiss schools. Multinational enterprises and public international organizations put it into practice. These institutions set the tone for finance 54 Living in the canton: Circles and communities
and control, marketing and consumption of resources and human relations, industrial organisation and especially technological innovation, for which Switzerland is one of the hotbeds in Europe. Finally this body of knowledge and concepts in Original Version “OV” percolates into the daily life of Genevans and others. The relational and personal life is permeated, through the instrument of behaviourism, which the United States has used as a powerful tool for social control.
Such favourable or sometimes questionable innovations are not ascribed to the Anglophones of Geneva. They would probably be produced without them, as part of globalisation, here as elsewhere. However, thanks to American sociology, we now know the levers of influence and opinion in all societies. It takes culture smugglers who, at their level, from the building to the neighbourhood, from the company to the churches, universities and sports, set the tone and arouse emulation. Living together is also a case of mimicry and imitation, unconscious or voluntary, as well as moral. To take a recent example, without any empirical research, board sports practised on water, snow, asphalt, or in the air are proliferating in Geneva on the lake, the docks and in the nearby Alps. They have their myths and their “hipster tree-hugging” ideology. The rules and jargon are formulated in American. In this respect, a certain Californification of the young people initially sets in among the Anglophones, then step by step it gets passed on to all those whose dream of an American future among youth of all backgrounds in Geneva for two generations.
Portrait 55
Americo* the success of the Secundo
Genevois birth, Americo is of Italian by his offices, he decided to cross the narrow parents who have spent half a century in bridge that lead to the university, without Geneva. His mother is a native of Friuli and the Swiss maturity diploma. His studies his father from deep Sicily, back when all in Literature and Art History enchanted that counted there was agriculture and an him and revealed him to himself. Him, archaic social structure. Of his father who the second generation “Rital”, this time worked at the laundry of the University made up for the ignorance and humility of Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) until his his parents. He set up house with a young retirement and his mother who had been woman of the Swiss bourgeoisie, and they in France before Americo was born, he have two perfectly integrated children. said: “They were people of the highest Yet he confesses that he has not sought integrity, for whom work was the horizon, to obtain Swiss citizenship, as it’s too but they were not born to material expensive and too complicated, despite his happiness, as it’s understood in Geneva.” years in Switzerland. But this doesn’t keep He spent his childhood in Onex in a large him from feeling like this is home, and not housing estate. It put him in contact Italy where he has never lived. with the public school until mandatory secondary school and a bunch of Secundos like him. * This person, while real, did not wish to be The school was not a problem for him, presented under his real name. except that at the end of his schooling he more or less decided to stop excelling there. “It’s possible that I was compensating for the facelessness of my parents and their life of humiliation.” The father worked nights and mother cleaned houses. He then started an apprenticeship as a draughtsman in an architect’s office. He left home and continued to earn his living for eighteen years. He’s almost fifty now and works in a state office in a position that relates to his skills as an art historian and draughtsman. Because at the end of his apprenticeship, despite offers from several architectural 57
6.
living in the canton Migrants and refugees 58 Living in the canton: Migrants and refugees 59
Migrants and refugees
Applicants for asylum and authorised refugees form a disparate group by origin but one which shares similar conditions in Switzerland. These are not, however, at this stage, asylum seekers who impact on social cohesion alone, but a larger set of migrants pending job applications and settlement, and not only those among them who are seeking asylum. This means migrants from countries in serious economic and political crisis, whose culture is furthermore far removed from than of Switzerland.
Migrants waiting for residence permits are to date neither preventably nor likely to be summarily sent away by government action or international law. That is why those of them who seek political asylum, the most visible “applicants” become the focus of xenophobic malaise from a part of the population, especially when Switzerland, though not on the front lines, is preparing to undergo migration crisis from the Middle East. Switzerland is squaring itself between this uneasiness and a natural and institutional solidarity linked the rest of Europe for the reception of migrants (via Schengen-Dublin and the free movement of people within the borders of the European Union). In this case, the expected or feared migratory wave is added to migration caused by previous crises, such as the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, or the fall of the USSR and by the recurrent troubles and conflicts in Africa. For example in Sudan, in the Horn of Africa and in East Africa and West and Central Africa. Finally, the ongoing international and civil wars in the Middle East: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
The aid to asylum seekers in its territory largely comes to the State of Geneva through the intermediary of the General Hospice. A social institution dating back to the sixteenth century, the Hospice became an establishment of independent public law which deals with welfare- dependent people in Geneva, especially foreigners who fall within the Confederation’s asylum policy. That policy sets the rules for intervention for the needy and for applicant asylum seekers, but also for migrants who stay on Swiss territory without requesting political asylum or those whose requests the federal government – the Secretariat for Migration – are inadmissible or have been denied. These latter people, the Seekers pending approval, the Application Inadmissibles or the Denied, receive a modest amount of food money per day.
At Geneva General Hospice, the aid to foreigner is generally paid out of its budget supplied on this in large part by the Confederation. The categories of aid for asylum seekers are threefold. Accommodation is chiefly provided in group homes created for this purpose. There are eight of them within the canton. Some asylum applicants get jobs, income and housing on their own. The communes also make housing available to the General Hospice. Some individuals do the same. Besides accommodation, the Hospice takes care of the health of immigrants. It assumes their health costs before they are insured in Switzerland. The assistance, including financial, administrative and job search help is also among its benefits, as well as children’s schooling and pre-job training and housing costs for adults.
The number of asylum seekers in Geneva for the year 2015 was 2,646, or 6.6% of the total applicants in Switzerland, 39,523 for the same year. 2015 marked a significant increase in applicants compared to 2014. Over the past five years from 2010 to 2015, the increase was 25%. In early 2016, the cumulative number of beneficiaries of the Hospice covered as procedurally-pending applicants was 22,260. In order of origins of the most represented people in Switzerland, we have: Eritreans, Afghans, Syrians and Iraqis. 60 Living in the canton: Migrants and refugees
A few figures in millions of Swiss francs gives you a sense of the magnitude of the benefits provided by the Hospice. The total budget for the Hospice’s benefits comes to CHF 298 million, up 1% over 2014. Asylum-only benefits come to CHF 86.7 million, nearly half of the total of the Hospice’s benefits (Social Benefits for the general population, plus Asylum). The Confederation assumes half, or approximately CHF 44.8 million. If you add to the Asylum budget the operating costs, mainly staff, the net figure for 2015 was CHF 78.5 million charged to the Hospice. The increase in benefits is due for the most part to the accommodation costs in opening new homes.
Eritreans
Let’s take two examples of groups which are also complex and fragmented into different individuals: Sub-Saharan Africans and Muslims. Currently, after several significant waves of African emigration, especially from the Congo and North Africa in the previous decades, Eritreans numbering 341 in 2014 and 523 in 2015 are the most numerous. In total, there are 1,387 Eritreans residing in Geneva. T. was born in Asmara, Eritrea about forty years ago. He left his country in 2005, with the help of Christian Genevans who knew him and knew the condition of much of the Eritrean people, exploited and repressed by an Inquisition-like and cruel dictatorship that seeks its main source of legitimacy in the endless war with its neighbour Ethiopia. In Geneva T. has worked for several years on integrating with the help of Genevan, and on a place to live and work. He only applied for asylum in the early 2010s, along with many compatriots. T. took almost five years to get the Confederation approval with the legal and administrative assistance provided by the canton. Having received asylum and his residence and work permit, he managed to bring his wife and two children who now live in an apartment that suits them in the commune of Vernier. T. works as a caregiver in a hospital institution. He managed to obtain recognition of the skills he acquired in his country. He has overcome a serious illness, thanks to the care of the cantonal hospital. He has a physically demanding job. His wife is also actively employed. In a few months the children mastered French and overcome academic difficulties. No one complains. The Genevan friends remain committed to their friendship with this family.
T. is a successful example of the Swiss asylum policy. But that’s not the case for all Eritreans. His fellow immigrants are present in T.’s life; especially because of the Christian religion, as he is particularly active in creating an Eritrean parish. Among his countrymen there are strong elements of solidarity that are transmitted through the feeling of being a Christian minority. Eritrea is very remote for T. now. He remains Eritrean but has no desire to return to his country whose political system is not improving. He spontaneously shows his gratitude to Switzerland. At no time did he feel in his work or in his dealings with the authorities any discriminatory attitudes or language. He believes it’s the same for his compatriots and coreligionists in Geneva. The Confederation and the canton exert vigilance against racist incidents.
Muslims
Like the Portuguese, other communities come together and stretch across decades. They do marginalise themselves to the point of living apart in Switzerland and in Geneva. Unlike perhaps what happens in larger European countries. Muslims, more of a religious than Living in the canton: Migrants and refugees 61
ethnic or cultural formation, are too different to each other to form a coherent group, at the level of mosques and associations. Their history in Switzerland reflects a diversity of backgrounds and of Islam; a diversity that equals that of Geneva itself. Historical groups, whether they be North Africans and the Turks since the sixties, the Albanians, Kosovars and Bosnians in 1990s or recent immigrants from the Arab Spring, joined by indigenous converts, are not exclusive in terms of religion and religious practices. However, they have different associations that give form to several communities interfacing with the Swiss authorities. Majority Sunnis and Shiites in small numbers hardly interact at all. This dispersion, however, has been devoid of visible radicalization so far, in the sense of an extremist ideology. In Geneva, Ouardiri (See picture) is trying to unite the diversity of Sunnis into a theologically and socially open community, but much remains to be done. The number of Muslims in Switzerland may well be nearly 400,000, although the figures are not official. Of these, currently twenty thousand are for Geneva, which puts them as the third largest religious group in the canton, after Catholics and Protestants.
Swiss society stigmatises Muslims at different times and degrees given the spectrum of its media landscape. We recall the divisions in the Swiss public opinion at the time of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the expansionist Shiite ideology that followed. More recently, the adoption of the Swiss initiative against minarets in 2009; for years, the never completed debate on the veil in schools or, for Geneva, the security suspicions surrounding the Saconnex mosque all formed stumbling blocks. And still in Geneva, there was a police episode and security measures undertaken in early 2016 on the denunciation by the Swiss foreign intelligence services against radicalised Muslims in the territorial area of Switzerland following the Paris attacks of 13 November. The confirmed presence of Swiss Muslims among the ranks of the Islamic State DAECH, in Iraq and Syria has been noted. This creates an intermittent feeling of mistrust towards Muslims, over the crises in the Arab word and the Middle East. This unease is further aggravated by the wave of migrants which promises to overwhelm Europe from the Syrian Summer in 2015. Its impact for Switzerland still needs to be assessed. We also need to measure the gravity of this mistrust on the part of the native Genevans and how Muslims in Geneva experience this in the field of social cohesion.
The historical and geographical proximity to France, through the media channels and a strong Francophonie in the Arab Maghreb, makes Swiss French-speaking opinion sensitive to and often in line with that of France, where the French neighbours have been suffering from Islamic terrorism in 2015 -16. Switzerland and Geneva do not feel safe, owing to a lack of their own information and prevention resources. The canton’s secularism, renewed in 2013 in its new constitution and the expectation of a Geneva law on religion serve to disincline the authorities to greater complacency regarding Muslim schooling or clothing grievances when there are any. The very idea of an English-style communalism – wide autonomy of each community in the area of rituals and places of worship – is not longer the Genevan ideal. The latter is more rooted in the idealisation of the rule of law, involving strict equality of citizens before the law. This Genevan ideal produces a more sober secularism than in France (less ideological), recognising limited freedom of customs and behaviour in the public space.
Is there a Muslim problem in Switzerland and Geneva? The most important element is due to the migration crisis of 2015, inasmuch as it announces for Switzerland an unknown number 62 Living in the canton: Migrants and refugees
of Muslim migrants to come, whatever the European commitments vis-à-vis the countries of the European Union may be. This quantitative element therefore is transforming into one of culture and identity in anticipation of the influx of a population whose spiritual, cultural and political references are too different from the Swiss tradition to be assimilated in just a few years. This is especially the case given the resurgence of Islamic terrorism in the West, after 11 September 2001 in New York. The culturalist reflex in the country of immigration corresponds to the The boat is full symptom. This protective symptom does not need to wait for the wave of Muslim migrants. It is there, present in Swiss and Genevan life, via the political parties and public opinion. The public, perceiving a form of saturation, willingly works by attaching necessarily arbitrary quantitative thresholds and claiming that these are being exceeded.
The other symptom is that of Hospitality. Hospitality can be attributed to a moral principle, which is of considerable importance for living together. One may equally make a case, as did German Chancellor Merkel, based on economic and demographic realities. Like Germany, Switzerland does not renew its population by itself; it thus needs to rely upon migrants to do so. Muslims, particularly the Syrians, are not culturally alien to the Swiss or Genevan identity. Here the issue is entirely one of political sensitivity: all political decisions on immigration are based on facts, but just as much on ideological representations. Both political sensitivities, however, recognise that the vast majority of Muslim residents in Switzerland and Geneva to date are trying to make their entry into Swiss society without any collusion with either civil or terrorist violence.
This floating state between openness and closing out is not made easier by theW estern cultural climate to which Switzerland belongs, insofar as the EU remains undecided and probably will be for a long time yet, on the symptoms of hospitality or rejection. On the cusp of entering into this dilemma in a crisis of political impotence. Switzerland also follows and precedes this impotence because it has experience, throughout the twentieth century, of the Boat is full appeal, despite which did not lead to a satisfactory regime for controlling migration, a decision between openness and closure. Even if Switzerland were to find it, it’s not a given that it would manage this regime in line with its key partner, the EU, in this field of migration, nor that it would serve to alleviate the migratory wave from Africa and the Middle East.
As for the Genevan population, it is managing the unease with pragmatism. The majority opinion does not express any more hostility towards Muslims than they do to other communities of origin or language. Although some Islamic associations report experiencing a tense climate with these others. Genevans are aware of belonging to the movement of the West and feel themselves to be seen as enemies by some Islamists. This despite the historical absence of Swiss colonialism, the neutrality and the presence of international organisations in Geneva for peace, including for the Middle East. The absence of destructive amalgamations in Switzerland, bundling all Muslims, Islamists, terrorists and ultimately migrants, makes public opinion sensitive to the sufferings of Muslims caught in the Syrian and Iraqi armed conflicts, just as it to Eastern Christians. The Genevan people, accustomed to the migrant and established foreigner, are mostly devoid of any claims to sovereignty and identity. Swiss certainly, but not chauvinists, as evidenced by the many welcoming initiatives provided by civil society. These include the Geneva Inter-Knowing Foundation, which advocates for a better understanding between religions. The Foundation brings together the three monotheistic religions and Buddhist religions.
Portrait 63
Hafid Ouardiri a mediator of religions
Known in Geneva for his efforts At the start of the 2000s Ouardiri committed in the mutual recognition himself to the people of Pâquis, with of religions, H. Ouardiri is a Muslim youth, boys and girls together, practising Muslim, engaged in under the name Civislam, at the temple of the theological work of Islam and the Pâquis. He is convinced that there is in helping his coreligionists. A no Islamophobia in the people of Geneva. former spokesman of the Grand- With Civislam he raises inter-awareness of Saconnex mosque, Ouardiri the monotheistic religions in an interfaith distanced himself from it when the Saudi platform. There then followed a spiritual sponsors of the mosque wanted to change call and the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for the structure and the imams. Ouardiri, training, against radicalization. From the a devout Algerian-Moroccan Muslim, start, Geneva has been for him a privileged grew up in Lyon and came to Geneva place of this experience of respect and in 1973. Following his ouster from the recognition of religions, through the mutual mosque, he created the Inter-Knowing evolution against fundamentalism, a word Foundation, which he established in the that he does not use. He now works with Pâquis neighbourhood and whose diverse the Geneva authorities in an interfaith group backgrounds and religions interests him. to obtain recognition of the constitutional He manages his foundation on private funds article on freedom of conscience. with other founding members including a rabbi, a priest and a pastor. The success The radical rhetoric of Muslims, he says, of this work stems first from the fact that is one of victimisation before the majority the Foundation, under the leadership of its society, perceived as oppressive. It creates creator, advocates for Muslims free from guilt on both sides. And yet, as Samuel their interpretations of the Koran. The Huntington (author of: The Clash of inter-knowing comes a surah which teaches Civilizations) saw it: “It is not civilizations us to: “Move forward in our common that clash, but mutual ignorances.” humanity.” For Ouardiri, this is about talking about religion in contemporary culture and language, in order to make for an opening of Islam in a modern society, including the rituals that must not become frozen. Meetings take place at a high level, such as at the Seville Conference in the 1980s. 64 Living in the canton: Migrants and refugees
Cantons and communes are mobilising to take responsibility for the reception of Muslim migrants, whether it be essentially for the issue of accommodation, especially for asylum seekers or social issues that they depend on: health and schooling. In Lausanne as in Geneva, the citizens, sensitive to the suffering and the long road Syrian refugees have taken to seek asylum, have volunteered to house them. The cantons recognise religious freedom and the value of faith-based organisations. Their secularism will not go so far as to require the formation of a central and single contact person for the religion.
The Muslims of Geneva in their diversity are aware of these proofs of solidarity. They usually pay particular attention to the peaceful and non-political nature of their preachers and imams, which does not prevent some Swiss from joining the Islamist fighting in Syria and Iraq. Geneva’s Muslims would like more recognition of their religious identity and denomination, which is done in the canton of Vaud by a regulation.
In Switzerland Muslims come from countries in conflict, bearers of a History that has recently been shattered. They arrive in a society that no longer lives in its recent history in the shadow of tragedy. They are assisted with housing, residence permits, in long wait for asylum seekers, financial and legal assistance, health and schools. But they continue to suffer from the misfortune that sent them into their exile. They struggle to imagine their future in Switzerland. Some are turned away. (One statistic from the European Union shows Switzerland as the country that turns away the most immigrants in proportion to its own population). Some immigrants go into hiding. Everyone knows despite all the humiliation and sometimes depression (or the frustration of exile, as it’s called). It is increased by a public opinion that is wary of them on the whole and by stereotypes. In Geneva the record for living together is still positive so far, as a prelude perhaps to a massive immigration. 65
7. living in the canton Working together 66 67 68 living in the canton: working together
Diversity of statuses: the status for foreigners
The interactions of Genevans occur mainly amongst themselves, within and outside of several national affiliations. They, however, occur almost as much between the public and the official authorities of the Confederation and the cantonal government. This tight web of interactions is essentially built under the Swiss federal system and into the direct democracy that is unique to it. The constant back and forth is that same as of other democracies, but it is denser in Geneva, given the multiplicity of authorities, divided here into one state and 45 municipalities. The interactions cover the aspects of daily life that are determinants for living together. We refer of course to the differentiated personal legal statuses, to the complete or restricted citizenship they cover, to their respective tax scheme, to the rights and obligations of public law in areas from labour and employment, to social assistance, including asylum seekers, to physical and mental health, to housing and to access to education and culture.
The personal status, enhanced by the new Geneva constitution, awards foreigners the right to vote in their commune under certain conditions. They are denied communal eligibility, however. This status reflects the majority will of the constituents who formulated the text adopted in 2013 by the citizens of Geneva. It only grants a relatively subordinate part to the political rights of foreigners. Some of them believe that this step forward of the Constitution is sufficient. It roughly corresponds to the legislation of other cantons and foreign states. Other foreigners, including both simple residents and legally-recognised dual national citizens, find the constitutional article too restrictive, given the number of foreigners living in Geneva, the part they play in the economy and social life, as well as the relatively small funnel for naturalisation after years of residence.
It is in this particular regard that Geneva is a kind of metropolis, since foreigners are widely sought and admitted there, and that their social life among the circles of the Geneva diversity is intense. Nevertheless, the harmonious acceptance of the differences also takes place in some form of anonymity, at least in the physical public space (transport, roads, parks and public buildings). The same applies in the political public space, where the participation of foreigners, where it is permitted, remains limited. This is what is characteristic of big cities and mass democracy, even though, again, the canton is small. Within economic and social life, foreigners are not alienated, but on the contrary, accepted in their specificity. They perform essential functions at all levels and greatly benefit from the labour conditions in Switzerland, except for the status of migrants and asylum seekers pending a residence permit. They are guests in the Swiss tradition but the guests cannot immediately take the place of the hosts. The hospitality is not perfect, and probably not complete, despite the efforts of the host country. living in the canton: working together 69
Professional life and businesses
It is the businesses that seek the foreigners. They have an active policy for immigration of a foreign workforce, which performs essential functions in the service, industry, construction and catering sectors. But also for recruiting and hiring middle and senior managers in all fields that require high skills, sometimes insufficiently available among the Swiss, such as financial services and insurance, university, health and high value- added industries. Multinationals and international organisations hire internationals, a class that exerts great influence on living together.
Overall effect of globalisation and impact on living together. The impact of businesses is largely one that has been described through the territory and communes, communities and the newcomers. The lives of businesses and the economy are those which most call for the presence and work of foreigners. So they create a favourable expectation for them. This has been the case going back to at least 1945. Thus, apart from the economic vicissitude, there exists a culture of saving freedom-loving trade and movement of people, starting with the countries of Europe, through Schengen. This is a freedom widely shared across the political spectrum of Swiss sensibilities, even by those seeking limits on the entry of immigrants, particularly in Europe. The same posture in principle, friendly towards foreigners, is confirmed within the respective cultures of most companies considered individually. Most of these in Geneva are not only seekers of foreign labour and foreign executives, but they are accustomed to them as well. To the point that routine human and hierarchical relationships suffers very little from this, no more than does the company’s performance. The HR manager of a large financial institution claims in five years on the job to have never seen a protectionist backlash amongst Swiss executives of his company and even less any xenophobic attitude. Language no longer plays a role at the upper level, no more than do origins and career paths. Outside of work, executives tend to meet by dint of affinities, culture and recreational activities. From the Anglo-Saxon-dominant style of globalised management to which the Director of Human Resources subscribes, both the good and bad habits are essentially adopted. In this, he senses that social networks are playing a growing role within the company. They tend to allow media expression, beyond the company concerned, of everyone’s evaluation of each other. This goes in particular from the bottom up, which breaks the traditional patterns of authority and the fluidity of work and is not without its effect on living together. The HRD no longer regrets this, but does point out its inevitable impact.
The economic situation and ambient prosperity play an obvious role in the business culture and society. When the economic situation darkens, wealth-sharing is reduced or disappears at the expense of the welfare state. In politics, we see a proliferation of extra-parliamentary initiatives and possibly a symptom of the Boat is full mentality, at the expense of foreigners and migrants. Each side reflects their unease with the whole of society and thus of the companies. 70 living in the canton: working together
The hospital and health
Two University Hospitals, Geneva and Lausanne have clinical and research relationships between themselves and with others in Switzerland and abroad. Access to emergency care or normal access is unrestricted for transient or provisional residents as well as for others. Outpatient care providers exist in key districts of the city to receive patients. The payment of care is done retroactively by the health insurance companies or the national social security for foreigners. No care is denied for lack of agreements or adequate financial guarantees. Care is made easier for migrants or for the needy who do not have the means, including linguistic or cultural means, for presenting their case. The cantonal hospital is largely funded by the canton just like the General Hospice is. Of ancient history, the Hospice continues to this day. It helps the needy, particularly in terms of material needs. The city and other communes also have their social assistance services for health. Those who have face the triple challenge of being migrants pending asylum or departure once rejected, of being poor and in poor health pose a problem for the canton and its officials. But they are nonetheless not refused treatment in the health facilities.
As for the others, that is to say, most of the people of Geneva in demand of care, they are generally pleased with the quality of care, while deploring the costs of health and health insurance, which have seen a continuous rise for decades. The indigent are given financial assistance. Thus hospital, whatever the cost, is thus individually sometimes terminally, a place of sociability between people who would not have otherwise met. From this point of view, for the hospitalised the shared room looks a bit more like a boarding dormitory, a barracks room at a dire moment of community life. It is not merely inhabited by misfortune and suffering. No one goes there for the pleasure of it, but sometimes people make room and treatment friends there. Between patients with the same disease, the same good mood prevails. A proper medical structure ensures communication between foreign patients and caregivers, and their medical care. The hospital structure, highly hierarchical, functional, crossed by occasional social conflicts between staff and the hierarchy, however, remains friendly thanks to everyone’s respective qualities. In this regard, the illness is not a purely negative circumstance, which connects an advanced and technologically high-end hospital like that of Geneva to the universal hospital condition. In hospitals in Africa, for example, the social life of the patient, far from stopping, actually intensifies by the necessary and desired presence of the family.
School and learning from each other
In a country with a strong pedagogic tradition going back to the “Emile” of Rousseau to Jean Piaget, and which has always made educating the next generation a moral duty for all, school is a prominent place of living together. In the pedagogic vein of the Swiss, we point out the highly legal and moral position of the Confederation in international relations. School affects young people as well as their parents and relatives. It takes on board all children, even those whose parents’ immigration status remains delicate. School is therefore everywhere in society and society is in the school. In addition to health, mobility and safety, it occupies a dominant share of the spontaneous conversations in the spaces and the Geneva public transport. Schools manage the largest budget of the canton. It is watched over by all citizens and taxpayers who wish to get an idea of its merits and costs. As such, the school is a political living in the canton: working together 71
subject that is constantly discussed in parliament and often reformed by the government. It intensively socialises children, even if teachers sometimes fight this, preferring to impart knowledge than codes of good behaviour. Between imparting knowledge, training for careers, socialising children and families to Swiss habits and to tolerance of social diversity, school and post-compulsory secondary education play a central role in the city.
The public school in a broad sense is characterized in Geneva by frequent reforms affecting programmes and content, courses and teachers. It is marked by a certain assiduousness in educational invention for the transmission of knowledge and occupational training. Its cantonal budgetary funding is a priority, though it is often debated.
There are several stages of school life and many places where education takes place. Be it beyond academic knowledge, education on the requirements of life in society and in the acquisition of a certain degree of social skill. The most fundamental is tolerance to differences as a key factor for social life, in addition to critical thinking. To accept the other, the different, the non-family, in daily practice, even though some of their reactions run against yours, this internalisation of respect requires a long development period. The creation of the person, of the self, depends on this, to the extent that the other is me as much as the reverse. To accept difference without violence and in the equality of the educational condition. This leads to a reciprocity of attitudes and exchanges. Jean Piaget, the epistemologist, who closely observed children and their mental development in Geneva, shows how the sense of reciprocity develops socially. From the equal treatment of children necessarily follow equal rights and reciprocal relations, which also allows for the comparison of the students and therefore their evaluation. Another step is the development of social practices. They range from the lack of peer violence to the elaborate forms of manners: helping the weaker, respecting genders, use of appropriate language, sharing games and learning and working towards common goals. These two moments happen under the control and possible sanction of an authority who must be accepted as such. Finally, socialisation requires the development of critical thinking and contradictory reasoning, while discovering and adopting the procedural rules of argumentation. Through debate and its procedures, it is access to the rules of democracy within a structure of authority.
Other school goals in Geneva serve to advance the integration of a diverse student population. The development of the next generation is essential. As a parent, all want a generation at least as successful as one’s own. This involves preparing it for new phenomena, to professional career path changes and possible insecurity, and the need to ambitiously improve its social capital. Overall school is not politicised, but the teachers and school administrators assume the task of creating citizens able to participate in civil and political society.
There are many ways to maintain the public school as a quality school. First, of course, is the entire curriculum with all its reforms and improvements in recent years. Moreover, the chief socialisation factors in school are in the frame in as personalised a way as possible and so too then, maintaining a favourable ratio between the teachers and the taught. The cultural offer of the school and sports are another resource for living together. The association of students and their parents walking to school is another moment of fruitful interaction in Genevan life. The integration of young people into the school system and more broadly into Geneva society causes intercultural effects, especially in what people call “youth speak”. Its a “language” you here everywhere in the city, which in terms of both the vocabulary as in the melody, resembles 72 living in the canton: working together
the way French youth speak, especially in the urban suburbs. Reversing words and Verlan (a kind of French Cockney), accentuation of the syllables like in Rap, greeting gestures, like the friendly but rough slap greeting, first with open hands followed by a fist bump. All are imports from French suburbs and probably from a Western youth at the point of receiving their socialisation and values. Their effect is to entrench a “youth” culture, the result of an otherwise global intercultural, and highly Americanised culture. This culture effectively effaces from the streets, buses and school playgrounds any of their traditional Genevan accent. The coded language of the young, for the most part challenged by the adult world, is obviously not the result of the school, which strives to teach French and in its conventional sense.
Other intercultural springs can be inferred in Geneva, such as anger or indignation. This passion, undervalued in a chastened in a democracy like Switzerland, indicates a potential collective challenge, despite the costly efforts of the State to supervise the intellect, health and psychology of teenagers in school, in their leisure activities and free time. Popular music in general, Rap and Hip Hop: dance and pictorial productions, Tags and Graphs of the last twenty years are a kind of musical and discursive valve with an overflow of generational emotions. For 20 years, the indignation of some young people has led them to seek an alternative culture and to take up a recurrent struggle for culturally creative spaces in the major cities. Indignation because, regardless of the entree of the youth as a social class and of the politics since the 1960s, society’s efforts at integration remain reversible. Therefore the intercultural trend continues to manifest itself among minority teenagers from many social origins, in line with contemporary movements of the “Indignados”. In Geneva the trend does not compare with the Spanish Indignados or North American in number or political significance.O utrage can be reclaimed by adult social movements and enter through the doorway of art in the form of high culture or indulge itself in occasional eruptions of vandalism, as what was done to cultural buildings in Geneva’s city centre on 19 December 2015.
The private school, a cantonal resource
The diversity of Geneva after two world wars created specific needs for the children of people coming from elsewhere. In 1924, after the creation of the League of Nations (LN), the Geneva government did away with any monopolistic vision of education. There were private schools, and the government authorised the creation of a private school for English-speaking students. This would be the International School of Geneva, a bilingual, French-English establishment. The school, now a campus of several thousand students across several sites, is aimed at Swiss children and children of internationals, and specifically those of whom who wish to pursue an education in English while gaining a solid grounding in French or vice versa.
Since then, other schools have been created including, in 1961, the Ecole Moser, named for Henri Moser, its founder and the father of the current director Alain Moser. This school created for children of Swiss Confederates who wish to acquire French, while improving their German, has continued to grow over the decades. It has two campuses in Geneva, one on the left bank, which receives 650 students, and one in Nyon, with 400 students. In 2000, the school expanded under the leadership of Alain Moser and created a German-French bilingual institution in Berlin, on the same basis as in Geneva, in the capital of reunified Germany. Berlin has been linked for centuries to French as a language. And linked since living in the canton: working together 73
the end of the war to the dual Franco-German history. The unique position for a bilingual Swiss institution, one that has thus entered into the linguistic and pedagogical intimacy of the Berlin-Paris relationship, is due to the Moser method, inherited from founder and taken up anew by his son.
Three original elements of the Moser method deserve mention here. The first is the assumed bilingualism of the teaching, courses and diplomas awarded. Henri Moser, with a background in German and Germanic languages, had developed a passion for French. Up until the two World Wars, he was a linguistic vehicle of modernisation for Switzerland. The idea was that at the threshold of modernity which, in Geneva, was reflected in the diversity of people and their children, there was an obligation to give these children a French diploma at least as good as native children of the canton, while strengthening bilingualism in German. This conviction continues because it has proven productive for post-war generations, according to Henri Moser’s slogan, one later taken up by Boutros Ghali as Secretary General of Francophonie. In his view, only the multilingualism of its speakers would ensure that French as language would remain of global importance. The current director, Alain Moser, also thinks, with the support of the cantonal authorities, that this profession of faith applies particularly to Switzerland, which has seen its trilingualism as an asset to its success as a country.
Second element: a comprehensive curriculum. To this end and over the decades, the Ecole has certainly become a school of languages in the plural, but also one offering comprehensive education where innovative teaching methods are applied, increasingly validated by the place of the school in Geneva education. The students are children between 7 to 18 years old, and predominantly Swiss. The parents are open to the world through their social position and are ambitious for their children. Hence languages, now beyond mere bilingualism: English, Spanish, Italian, as well as the option of Russian and Chinese workshops. Foreign parents who entrust their children to the school are therefore executives, often multilingual. The child’s stay in school is planned long term. The school does not receive the children for a simple transition into the school curriculum between two job assignments of the parents but for a full academic path. Parents want for their children an education with the Swiss label, which is especially promising in the field of quality and openness to the world. The Ecole Moser therefore occupies a niche position, combining the secular educational reputation of Switzerland and the interculturality of Geneva. This also means that the school is a business and that it is expensive in tuition and prodigal in all it offers beyond its core enterprise. Sports and recreational activities are integrated into the curriculum and into the schedule, as is done in England.
Finally, learning to learn. This means, teamwork, working with peers, as a privileged time for learning, at least as important as the courses and seminars where the transmission is from the teacher to the taught. Trainers for the benefit of Swiss state qualifications, continuously perfect themselves in the spirit of the school. Students work in a situation of cooperation and competition, allowing a spirit of teamwork to form, an essential element of the current teaching and of living together on the one hand, and the comparative emulation on the other. For the most part, students work and succeed together, especially when, like the philologist who founded it, school plays intensely with the words, languages and literatures in many disciplines. The language labs facilitate the application of immersion methods. The school is thus based on new communication technologies. 74 living in the canton: working together
Internal and external computer interaction is the order of the day, with a strong emphasis on the mastery of these technologies, backed by an extensive paper library.
The diplomas recognised and validated by the Geneva Department of Education stand as guarantors of the quality of the education. The school adds its spirit of openness to this quality. In addition to languages, there are the arts, music, dance, theatre and cinema in particular. Professions and careers are represented in the curriculum through the intervention of prominent professionals who come to show the students their experience. History classes, the history of institutions of the monotheistic religions, philosophy classes beginning right from primary school. Reception workshops on the media, argumentation and debate. All are part of the programme. In terms of this openness, we can speak of inter-culturality, to the extent that the students, regardless of their national or family origin, are engaged with the world’s diversity and cultures. They learn curiosity and mutual respect. Living together thus manifests itself on a daily basis in a school that produces social cohesion on its own scale. A cohesion inspired by Swiss values while considering the world and its major issues from a secular perspective. Last summer the school made two mountain chalets it owns in Villars available for the benefit of 180 migrant children, who arrived in Geneva in 2015, without parents or papers.
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8. By way of conclusion
common values and identity 76 77
The Hall of Human Rights at the Palais des Nations 78 By y wa of conclusion: common values and identity
Codes and values
There is a living together that is intuitive and behavioural. It was mentioned earlier relative to the image of Geneva in the world, to the territory and housing, to community diversity and to the interactions between people. The term living together dates from the twentieth century. In the years 1970-80, it became a fixed concept in democratic societies, which have become increasingly diverse, and is applied in the updated context of citizenship. This demands a code of good practices or, if you will, of etiquette. Etiquette and civility form canvas of customs that are learned and imitated of course, hence the importance of family, education, and of a social network for everyone. This also includes the importance of private and public rights of the state to structure, in this case, the cantonal city in all its aspects. The goal is to make life in society possible or better yet, harmonious.
Like the law, the codes affect behaviours, but there could be no living together without social morality; in other words, behind the behaviours a set of values and ethical standards that underlies them and interweaves them. As they underpin substantive law. Switzerland, rule of law, presents a legislation that is tightly bound to this idea. For example, the Code of Obligations in private matters on the one hand, and the laws on urban planning in public law on the other hand, lets people feel the density of this mesh on a daily basis. Every provision of private or public rights is imbued with a moral value which affects the residents, including newcomers. The most trivial regulations reflect it: from taking your turn civilly in a waiting queue at the post office, to the most restrictive: not building just anywhere you want in the cantonal territory.
Switzerland provides the foundation for its social morality. Geneva adds its own layer to the moral and legal framework. Collective Swiss identities are in fact, like the values that inspire them, composite and hierarchical. Despite Federalism and its History, many Geneva inhabitants, old and new alike, are attached to the singular cantonal dimension of their identity, ignoring its federal and historic construction, one that is potentially also European and global. Die-hard Swiss, however, and many foreigners who have chosen the canton, experience the compatibility of distinct identities as “polycentric” individuals. We could here cite the origin of certain Genevan values and their trace in the current living together. They are not exclusively cantonal nor respected by all, but are validated in the canton by history and certain contemporary social practices.
Hospitality
A primary value is that of hospitality. Federalism is the institutional method by which an existing core of alien populations and the states surrounding them aggregate. This is the story of the old Confederation. In Geneva hospitality begins with the Reformation in the 16th century, hosting the first and the secondR efuge of the reformed. Since then, and particularly in the 20th century, the canton has continued to absorb and sometimes reject many individuals who flock to its borders seeking to enter. It has done so in unison with Switzerland since the World War II. At that point, we can say that the physical and familiar border with an occupied and torn up France gave the refuge of Geneva particular importance, according to its tradition of hospitality. By y wa of conclusion: common values and identity 79
This is the Protestant vein of solidarity that leads to hospitality and the notion of the Refuge whose humanitarian law the Twentieth Century would draw upon, by extending beyond coreligionists. There is another vein of Calvin’s legacy that is connected to economic life. This is not about taking up the Max Weber’s thesis on Geneva, regarding the Protestant origins of capitalism, because that is more applicable to other Protestant countries. One cannot, however, deny that the solidarity with the Huguenots, in particular, which was historically correlated to two acquisitions of the old Genevan society, which were the textile factories – before the Industrial Revolution – and the bank, authorised by Calvin to alleviate poverty and facilitate economic development. These two Geneva developments are related to the role of money in the accumulation of capital. Finally, solidarity, like economic growth, is linked to the value of truth of which Calvin is the modern messenger for the literal truth of the bible, thenceforth shared through print circulation of the Gospels to fellow Christians. Daily life and personal morality are also affected by the value of truth. Later described as puritanical, this morality especially advocates the righteousness of the Christian and his sober personal life if he is rich. Insofar as they are practiced in Geneva, these values: solidarity-hospitality and truth and integrity of the individual all lead the way to modern individualism. The Christian is first an individual before his God and his own conscience. However, they are hardly or rarely attributed to Calvin, who was their proponent in Geneva. Today the few references to Calvin, especially in the media, are generally critical and disparaging.
In the 1960s of the past century, a Swiss political movement for limiting migrants took hold in Geneva making the closure, however partial, to foreign workers who were necessary for its prosperity all the more painful. The canton today is divided on this trend. It pits those whose identities are conservative and closed to otherness, against the advocates of hospitality, on the left and in the economy, favourable to the intake of foreigners. In Geneva as in the rest of Switzerland, a fear of overpopulation inevitably accompanies the movement for a solidarity of welcome. This fear was overcome after the war, when it came to expatriates of International Geneva, for whom a balance was found between the extraterritoriality of their personal status and the necessary solidarity of living together.
The present situation is different, though familiar to Geneva from the perspective of values. The question now is whether we can more effectively integrate the many newcomers from countries in crisis into the Genevan diversity and especially whether people would be likely to accept more. Without going into detail on the thorniest political issue, two observations present themselves. The first is on Genevan hospitality and the moral value of the refuge. It is not by chance that the High Commissioner for Refugees and other humanitarian institutions worldwide have their headquarters in Geneva. For asylum as a social fact does pose the question of moral, if not spiritual right, from every human to whom the refugee makes this appeal: “Try to put yourself in my place” because there is no true hospitality without an altruism like this. The foreigner is only welcomes if he is treated as another self. This was the case in Geneva in the 17th century through the ties of religion, blood and Christian charity. Of course, hospitality exists in other cultures too.
Second observation: in the very act of hospitality approved by the welcoming state, there is a simultaneous recognition of otherness. Mankind is certainly common to all, but for any government (even in Germany, with that of Chancellor Merkel), the brother is not the same as the self. Thus hospitality is not an absolute value. This manifests itself in the end, regardless of the generosity of the hosting policy, in the fact that reception is done under conditions of 80 By y wa of conclusion: common values and identity
material and time and space. The refugee must wait for a residence permit; he may possibly be refused reception. The refugee, an asylum seeker, the migrant, the foreign national, will remain in a holding lock before being admitted into the living together.
Refuge and reflux are the topic of political debates in the state and in the city and in Switzerland and in Europe. They are at the heart of the familiar conversations of the inhabitants of Geneva, regardless of their own degree of diversity/otherness. The first debate is no doubt about the legal status of foreigners. Since the adoption of the new Geneva constitution in 2013, it’s occupied a place in politics. Foreigners are more concerned about their family and economic situation, free of discrimination than they are about a possible naturalisation. The border migrants for their part, kinds of diurnal migrants, do not discuss their legal status as foreigners, but their tax status and their job, health, mobility (traffic) situation. The same goes for those “nocturnal border migrants” meaning the Swiss who reside in neighbouring France. Living together certainly, but the construction of the region or of Greater Geneva is facing the issues of space, movement, borders, and ultimately tax governance in real terms. Here again, the discussion is mostly political.
Should we think about the emergency of an influx of refugees for the next five years that would disrupt a politically delicate demographic balance? The parameters and the actors of such an emergency are too numerous to allow a prognosis: the perpetuation of the crises in the Middle East, Africa and Asia; the reception capacity and policy of the European Union; the limits of Switzerland’s own reception capacity and asylum policy decision, stuck between the two symptoms already cited of hospitality and the Boat is full. Finally add to this the provisions of the Geneva canton itself on this issue, according to the parameters mentioned: the territory and its development, economic prosperity and the effective integration of foreigners already present. These parameters control contradictory and competing representations.
F reedom, freedoms
Before democracy, Geneva had a republic. Whatever its oligarchic character and differentiation in the status of these people under the Old Regime, over the 18th and 19th centuries a degree of popular participation was emerging. Rousseau, the thinker of the “Social Contract”, the “Discourse on Inequality,” and spirit of the Enlightenment was a citizen of Geneva. He founded the idea of popular sovereignty and the general both of which result, he said, from the inalienable freedom of the human being. It is later, through the gradual conquest of freedoms and popular rights, that the Confederation assumes its character, thanks to the federal constitutions of 1848 and 1870. The origin of the dialectical movement of the refuge and the reflux is furthermore manifested in Swiss federalism. This not only consisted in the aggregation of successive cantons to an existing state body, but in the proclamation of the equality of their peoples and of their equal participation in the federal government. To the federal table, not all the contenders were admitted. If we add to these characters the separation of the three powers according to Montesquieu, and the checks and balances of American federalism, and the institutions of direct democracy, the Swiss Confederation represents one of the most successful democracies. All that remains is the popular sovereignty shared between all citizens, according to the principle of the general will and the social contract is originally Genevan. It leads to the democracy of consensus and agreement. It is striking to see how these ideas have inspired so many others; the By y wa of conclusion: common values and identity 81
Geneva constituents of 2008-12, even though the philosophical principles of Rousseau are now contested in law and political philosophy.
What remains of Rousseau today in Geneva? A philosophical idea of the general and consensual will feeds political debate, both formal and informal. The Geneva literary references of the twentieth century are many: Dunant and the Red Cross both drink from Rousseau’s humanism. Similarly for Traz, Guy de Pourtalès and Nicolas Bouvier for example (L’Usage du Monde [The Way of the World], use of a Genevan self identity in the diversity of the world). Some historians, mainly Jean Starobinski, are inspired by or clash with the personality and thought of the philosopher. Some of them do not hesitate to criticize Geneva, but they value, following Rousseau, its historical hospitality and democratic progress. Contemporary thinkers on public law do the same regarding the social contract, a result of the general will and the architect of social cohesion.
Rousseau was not in favour of representative democracy, that of parliaments, but he conceived that, except for small republics, it was necessary to deliver the general will through some mediators, hence a legislator. Despite Rousseau and his direct democracy, history produced a triple reference to representation in Geneva. Triple, because it affects the communes, the city and the cantonal state, all three with their own deliberative bodies where compromise or ideally consensus is sought through reasoned debate. One which pits the elected representatives of the various parties, and other social forces like unions and social movements against each other. Through them the diversity of Geneva is present if not represented, including the foreign and border communities, frequent topics of parliamentary debates. Political pluralism thus becomes an integral part of democratic life as it is for living together in diversity. The search for the common will is all the more laborious when its main issue is one of social equity, the issue of equality and development of the canton as an autonomous entity within the Confederation. Other actors are added in the discussion and negotiation: the canton of Vaud and bordering France, whose economic future is linked to that of Geneva. Some are able to get themselves heard by the voting population in the elections, referendums or popular Genevan initiatives. Living together comes at this political price. A heavy price to the extent that in its complexity the Geneva governance rarely delivers consensus on major projects.
So freedoms are fine, but how far should they go? The social contract puts democracy into force by developing a legal basis between the governed and the governors, linking both and designed to address what today would be called institutions of social cohesion, starting with the Constitution. This is why so many democracies are currently planning to reform their social contract and the general will, in consequence of Rousseau. In Geneva, the social contract remains a key point of reference, not only because it comes from a citizen of the Republic, but because the demographic and political diversity of the latter requires the updating of such a contractual principle.
Individual freedoms are the prerogative of the subject of the law, the citizen. They come from that part of their freedom everyone has agreed to relinquish for a greater good. Rousseau is not the thinker of the current liberal individualism, but he does profess Freedom (against the tyranny of the Old Regime) as the source of society and law. Yet to materialise throughout the 19th century, were the legal devices marking the modalities, scope and limitations of fundamental freedoms. The liberal thinkers of that century would 82 By y wa of conclusion: common values and identity
take on that task, including Benjamin Constant, a native of Vaud and the Lake Geneva region, and a Frenchman by adoption. He formulated the modern liberties in accordance with the minority cohort of English, American and French liberals working to establish a living together based on the premises of bourgeois liberal individualism, extended to include the entire population. They would succeed in France and the cantons at the turn of the century. The federal and cantonal constitutions give a central place to freedoms for the most part.
Geneva today is a living tributary of the heritage of individual freedoms, freedoms of: safety, conscience, opinion, expression, education and democratic participation, all of which were re-incorporated by the constitution of 2013. Among which, the economic freedom to undertake and participate in the global market, has sometimes taken more than its share relative to other freedoms and their active protection by the state.
Internationalism
Hospitality, democracy and freedoms. With Henri Dunant, freedom would change register in Geneva and gradually in the world as well. If there was a human right, derived but emblematic, which Dunant passionately fought for on the battlefields of his time, it was right to humane treatment, incorporated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, during the course of the Geneva Conventions. In war and in conflicts and signed treaties, these legal instruments affect the war wounded, the military in general, prisoners and civilians caught in the war and finally the fighters of insurgent movements. One could just as well write a right to the dignity and integrity of the person. Dunant and his successors made this into substantive law, thereby opening a paradigm of contemporary humanism, and of international relations.
The charity Dunant conceived sought to be reasonable, equitable and unobtrusive in its manifestations. It remains nonetheless a passionate charity. Whatever one may have said after it, this is clearly about Christian charity to start with, whose secular universalization would take time to complete. The Red Cross, the White Cross: the neutrality of the Confederation, especially since World War II, is reaffirmed with that of theR ed Cross, which, itself, had borrowed its emblem from that of Switzerland. Compassion for the other, a victim and sometimes perpetrator of the war, together with the neutral/impartiality vis-à-vis the belligerents is, as with Christian hospitality, an act of recognising of other in me and me in the other. Such compassion has a horror of war and abominates its cruelties. However, from the fact that it originates in man, conflict is presumed to be humanisable by law, rather than simply hateful and reprehensible. “Tutti fratelli” ( We are all brothers), proclaimed the first associations of women philanthropists around the battlefields in Italy. Neutrality is taking care of the wounded without discrimination to which army they belong to. Removing discrimination inherent to the facts of the war, rescuing each injured person equally leads to the a right and soon to a humanitarian legal system. This system does not abolish war, as other pacifists in Europe wished it would do, but by humanising the law seeks to moderate it.
We thus find Switzerland’s neutrality and modesty in the context of European wars, down to this very day. A function of modesty which tirelessly reaffirms itself in international relations of the Confederation. Modesty is a Protestant value, often doomed to be rejected by an inflation of the ego. It was such with Rousseau who expressed an “ostentatious” modesty. By y wa of conclusion: common values and identity 83
He never ceased to decry this in himself, despite the recognised intellectual brilliance and aplomb of his maturity. For his part, Dunant stepped aside in deference to his partners, the founders of the Red Cross, during the creative part of his life. He did so to the point that he lost his place on the Committee and in Geneva society. Modesty nonetheless remains at the heart of the Red Cross’s action under the form of discretion towards often the most heinous governments and promoters of wars, Modesty in both the humanitarian successes as well as its failures.
Internationalist values are present in Geneva today. The Institute of International and Development Studies (HEID) as home to the research and practice of contemporary international relations financed by the Confederation and the canton deserves a mention in this panorama of local values. These values result from first from the will of the Swiss and Geneva authorities to offer a privileged space for international organisations that embody modern humanism. Vitor do Prado (read his profile), questioned on the primacy of the humanitarian in Geneva over other registers of international cooperative recognises its importance. But he notes that this is not about “taking the lead on this issue” as some Genevans do. The awareness of internationalism is present in the population do Prado feels, but it is not the exclusive priority for the ICRC and human rights. The World Trade Organization (WTO), for example, is just as important for International Geneva.
Two other Genevan traits related to Henri Dunant still animate living together. The first lies in the outstanding contribution of Switzerland to the ICRC budget. It meets public approval, both in Geneva and in Bern. The second trait is the importance for Geneva of the recruitment of delegates and other officials of the International Committee from the Lake Geneva region. The delegate often represents, despite the modesty of their function, the contemporary figure of humanitarian idealism. He usually spends a few years of their life to this cause on the battlefield under extreme stress, something which demands professional and family sacrifices and above-average courage. He then returns home, now beyond the Lake Geneva region, after this service has been rendered. His example, his stories and the skills gained in his missions do not go unnoticed or heeded. They strengthen the legitimacy and the example of the humanitarian cause in society. Before recruiting non-Swiss delegates, one could argue, in the sense of the confederal modesty, that if there was an area where the ICRC was indisputably useful, it would be that of Swiss youth.
A Genevan identity?
Historical values are present in the collective existence of Genevans today. Cleary they are far from belonging to them alone and that they are not always at the heart of political debate or social cohesion, as expressed in everyday interactions. None of these values reigns supreme, since hospitality finds itself opposed by nationalist, even xenophobic tendencies in light of the potential wave of migrants. The manufacture of a general will as a necessary product of representative democracy is hindered by the growing implications of direct democracy, which play out outside parliament and often in the well-understood public, cantonal and confederal interest. It is also hampered by the difficulty inherent in the Genevan policy of generating consensus rather than obstacles. Finally, democratic freedoms are the most evolutionary value, conveyed by the internationalism of human rights, whose mechanism and ideology are manufactured in part in Geneva, within the framework 84 By y wa of conclusion: common values and identity
of international organisations. To the extent that these three values are discussed and contested within international and Swiss circles, particularly in the context of International Geneva, they affect politics and society in Geneva. This was evidenced by the adoption in 2013 of a cantonal constitution, which is inclusive of International Geneva or by the recent vote on a cantonal grant for the restoration of UN buildings.
Still, can one speak of a collective Genevan identity? The identity is changing both for communities and for individuals. This identity observes little historical continuity, except for a revised interpretation of “sustainable Geneva values” which do not belong exclusively to the canton, although they have served it as a reference in the last century. Nor do they belong to all Genevans anymore, because over the last few decades the population composition has changed significantly and therefore its interpretation of values.O ne could cite, among other demographic changes, the advent in the twentieth century of a Catholic religious majority in Geneva, driven primarily by immigration. The political and social influences under construction from surrounding Europe are also involved. A democratic Europe of course, but without any historical attachment to federalism and popular rights. Finally, the impact of the Swiss prosperity of the last sixty years on the entire Geneva population both attracts foreigners but puts off other by the adoption without much reserve in Switzerland of the excesses of globalisation, such as the deregulation the financial sector or the crushing of the private sphere by digitalisation. In total, the identities of the individual are increasingly multiple, except for essentializing one of them for the community, as is suggested by the contemporary adventure, of identities that are often violent, of ethnic, religious or national. These identities are jealous, that is to say, exclusionary, if not deadly, which was not the case of Geneva society in the past century.
Collective identity is usually inspired by the elite. This had been so in Geneva over the centuries by a religious, then a patrician and a bourgeois group, which gradually gave way to democratic advances bolstered by the entry of the canton into Switzerland, two centuries ago. This incorporation necessarily dissolved part of the cantonal identity into a larger whole. At the same time, the advent of federal democratic pluralism gave more political space to the various components of the population, while continually recreating conditions of inequality. Migrants are the most prominent group affected by these inequalities, insofar as they participate only marginally in the production of wealth, few in the acquisition of citizenship and political rights, while at the same time making an increasing contribution to living together, which is the visible part of a cantonal collective identity.
In Geneva, the demographic composition leads to identity-based tensions from day to day. But few of them fail the litmus test of human rights. Some groups are under surveillance such as the Islamist fringe among the Muslims. Others have been stigmatised such as the Norht African, Central African and Balkan networks, suspected of criminal activities. The historical distrust of sedentary societies towards the Roma has resurfaced at times. There are also centrifugal globalizing tensions affecting all collective identities by attenuating them, or conversely, by generating reactionary outbursts. Geneva has not invented anything new in this area, but over the decades its society has continued at a suitable level of cohesion. And it continues to make an asset of its unique diversity. 86
Appendices
Tables of migrants in Geneva (by nationality and residence permit) Appendices 87
Europe Schengen
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Germany Total migrants 916 995 902 1028 819 997 734 621 646 531 595 Annual permits 426 437 461 638 495 619 434 331 347 297 342 Establishment permits 28 29 20 36 30 35 21 23 34 35 36 Int’l officer permits 150 170 193 233 189 235 184 197 191 79 124 Short-term permits 312 359 228 121 105 108 95 70 74 120 93
Belgium Total migrants 261 234 319 318 305 267 249 267 319 262 337 Annual permits 118 82 166 202 199 186 158 170 209 164 213 Establishment permits 16 13 19 16 12 15 24 18 23 11 21 Int’l officer permits 37 22 56 64 55 44 40 51 61 39 44 Short-term permits 90 58 78 36 39 22 27 28 26 48 59
France Total migrants 2436 2978 3270 3711 3105 3369 2882 2741 3530 3952 4269 Annual permits 950 1044 1859 2797 2305 2574 2138 2061 2785 3213 3369 Establishment permits 122 163 125 150 131 134 138 121 156 152 236 Int’l officer permits 236 262 241 295 283 241 212 248 256 175 / Short-term permits 1128 1509 1045 469 386 420 394 311 332 412 472
Spain Total migrants 554 546 537 677 658 824 871 978 1303 1160 1274 Annual permits 194 192 284 404 411 550 604 675 989 872 898 Establishment permits 55 58 30 41 44 47 45 52 49 51 56 Int’l officer permits 122 129 109 177 123 133 115 144 143 87 112 Short-term permits 183 167 114 55 80 94 106 107 122 150 208
Italy Total migrants 895 860 1006 1257 1060 1174 1117 1128 1410 1392 1535 Annual permits 265 287 496 873 716 814 769 741 1001 1037 1112 Establishment permits 114 78 74 85 75 66 70 75 89 71 78 Int’l officer permits 155 128 163 184 173 182 164 190 178 104 152 Short-term permits 361 367 273 114 96 112 114 119 142 180 193
Portugal Total migrants 1946 1736 1629 1907 1550 1568 1437 1871 2085 1646 1605 Annual permits 318 266 540 1218 1018 1061 1010 1438 1807 1311 1245 Establishment permits 132 171 127 130 126 128 109 95 90 95 113 Int’l officer permits 26 28 42 37 47 33 19 40 42 18 / Short-term permits 1470 1271 919 522 359 346 299 298 145 222 222
Poland Total migrants 120 231 239 308 226 203 242 250 250 191 229 Annual permits 75 100 105 137 96 37 158 148 118 129 159 Establishment permits / / / / / / / / / / / Int’l officer permits 30 35 30 51 45 40 44 52 39 / 23 Short-term permits 13 95 101 118 83 54 37 50 89 45 44
UK Total migrants 877 1143 1060 1228 1219 1428 1203 1112 1029 899 944 Annual permits 355 426 548 888 818 1001 843 719 676 627 619 Establishment permits 31 28 26 33 34 33 38 40 35 36 56 Int’l officer permits 169 192 205 190 231 269 210 231 221 108 140 Short-term permits 322 497 281 115 136 125 112 122 96 128 129 88 Appendices
Non-Schengen Europe
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Croatia Total migrants 22 28 34 36 29 25 30 27 31 Asylum seekers Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 10 14 11 16 9 12 10 4 Short-term permits 7 5 Annual permits 7 11 17 19 20 12 14 16 22
Kosovo Total migrants 246 222 216 219 168 211 261 234 237 168 291 Asylum seekers 61 55 6 14 48 41 63 27 26 8 Establishment permits 42 29 40 24 10 19 22 11 18 35 Int’l officer permits Short-term permits 6 9 Annual permits 166 165 179 107 148 183 180 195 145 245
Bosnia-Herzegovina Total migrants 69 44 27 37 40 51 45 38 37 Asylum seekers 25 13 10 16 25 19 9 Establishment permits 6 Int’l officer permits 18 10 6 8 8 14 9 Short-term permits 9 Annual permits 13 21 19 17 14 12 19
Macedonia Total migrants 73 45 49 48 43 58 135 118 42 37 77 Asylum seekers 14 8 8 22 103 85 7 31 Establishment permits 11 6 9 7 6 5 Int’l officer permits 14 12 8 6 6 6 Short-term permits 6 Annual permits 33 23 22 26 24 25 22 23 17 26 36
Russia Total migrants 576 561 600 580 673 643 585 586 630 350 402 Asylum seekers 23 27 7 17 22 26 22 27 14 13 18 Establishment permits 7 6 4 8 Int’l officer permits 317 251 307 238 301 227 146 191 179 65 90 Short-term permits 31 35 42 40 24 31 34 56 66 35 46 Annual permits 201 244 240 280 321 344 382 305 365 233 240
Serbia Total migrants 79 128 85 101 87 142 129 110 112 59 75 Asylum seekers 22 17 44 31 55 51 49 29 4 16 Establishment permits 11 8 6 Int’l officer permits 11 11 13 10 7 9 11 22 4 7 Short-term permits 9 9 Annual permits 43 48 36 34 103 63 43 46 46 46
Turkey Total migrants 192 240 228 252 257 240 224 180 215 131 162 Asylum seekers 20 17 25 6 11 20 22 14 6 13 Establishment permits 17 17 13 13 7 10 7 6 8 11 Int’l officer permits 55 48 62 70 50 76 50 47 69 14 39 Short-term permits 17 9 6 11 8 6 9 Annual permits 138 124 133 188 132 142 101 116 99 90 Appendices 89
Africa
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Algeria Total migrants 82 112 100 117 122 112 107 110 113 70 103 Asylum seekers 7 6 17 12 22 29 49 23 25 Establishment permits 10 6 7 7 Int’l officer permits 13 31 24 35 27 30 20 11 20 7 9 Short-term permits 6 6 Annual permits 50 72 62 70 68 65 57 61 35 37 58
Morocco Total migrants 178 191 198 209 203 212 167 186 117 123 105 Asylum seekers 10 19 37 19 12 Establishment permits 24 15 6 8 10 10 7 7 10 Int’l officer permits 22 33 30 39 43 26 16 45 18 13 12 Short-term permits 12 14 23 13 14 10 10 9 7 Annual permits 119 128 59 155 135 155 124 105 103 82 69
Tunisia Total migrants 93 130 127 138 139 152 197 172 173 106 142 Asylum seekers 11 69 56 71 23 18 Establishment permits 8 6 13 12 Int’l officer permits 27 35 27 30 23 19 34 14 17 10 28 Short-term permits 8 9 6 12 9 4 Annual permits 55 80 87 100 99 103 77 90 77 68 80
Egypt Total migrants 94 106 97 103 167 120 124 82 125 77 114 Asylum seekers 7 Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 61 55 50 56 91 65 61 40 60 19 47 Short-term permits 12 8 6 12 Annual permits 26 35 35 41 70 44 53 35 58 49 47
Cameroon Total migrants 104 142 134 128 139 121 81 61 73 45 66 Asylum seekers 10 9 6 7 5 6 Establishment permits 9 9 11 10 7 6 7 7 Int’l officer permits 15 15 18 30 16 37 25 10 20 11 10 Short-term permits 7 9 10 6 8 4 Annual permits 68 100 98 72 101 61 46 36 34 25 39
Congo Total migrants 59 48 61 33 65 61 52 56 60 39 57 Asylum seekers 28 15 10 7 16 6 10 11 15 9 10 Establishment permits 6 6 11 8 6 6 6 10 6 8 Int’l officer permits 8 21 6 12 14 7 Short-term permits Annual permits 21 17 23 11 31 35 29 20 15 11 33
Eritrea Total migrants 22 35 90 143 80 82 148 201 126 341 523 Asylum seekers 6 21 74 117 69 138 192 100 320 512 Establishment permits 67 Int’l officer permits Short-term permits Annual permits 10 8 13 18 9 8 7 20 13 8
Nigeria Total migrants 78 58 94 113 162 161 155 230 191 98 105 Asylum seekers 8 7 31 93 67 80 133 93 50 50 Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 55 33 56 52 44 50 42 46 61 20 25 Short-term permits 8 12 13 Annual permits 13 18 22 26 20 35 25 34 19 14 24
Sudan Total migrants 42 37 40 42 45 25 34 26 31 Asylum seekers 9 8 6 18 Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 34 29 30 28 33 12 21 16 9 Short-term permits Annual permits 6 7 7 90 Appendices
Asia 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 China Total migrants 261 308 302 324 250 404 322 360 450 250 362 Asylum seekers 11 24 24 23 9 Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 119 112 160 203 154 248 152 183 197 78 126 Short-term permits 33 63 47 22 10 20 29 43 51 35 53 Annual permits 105 119 88 97 81 128 111 108 174 131 166
India Total migrants 374 477 502 582 576 655 473 433 482 362 416 Asylum seekers 4 Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 175 156 161 168 150 197 118 114 149 68 131 Short-term permits 128 228 253 266 265 264 219 184 188 139 143 Annual permits 71 93 88 148 160 191 134 133 139 149 139
Japan Total migrants 235 289 243 279 273 307 274 247 303 227 271 Asylum seekers Establishment permits 6 Int’l officer permits 87 116 115 81 121 116 105 86 114 37 76 Short-term permits 20 17 14 26 15 19 27 31 19 35 Annual permits 125 153 114 169 146 173 148 129 153 165 160
Philippines Total migrants 180 137 186 184 190 174 142 186 146 130 128 Asylum seekers Establishment permits 7 8 14 8 Int’l officer permits 142 108 133 141 119 105 90 136 84 66 72 Short-term permits 42 8 7 12 6 5 Annual permits 29 24 41 34 56 55 35 40 52 54 49
Afghanistan Total migrants 26 56 36 42 65 61 85 79 43 390 Asylum seekers 9 17 14 23 24 34 45 32 24 369 Establishment permits 6 Int’l officer permits 17 10 33 18 30 34 7 Short-term permits Annual permits 11 16 8 9 6 9 9 12 11
Iraq Total migrants 30 49 87 105 51 40 50 39 53 196 Asylum seekers 16 28 63 65 36 16 21 18 15 166 Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 11 13 15 29 9 12 11 16 30 Short-term permits Annual permits 6 7 10 8 13 6 14
Iran Total migrants 76 80 102 79 88 114 104 89 86 56 105 Asylum seekers 6 6 11 12 13 18 17 10 40 Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 40 33 45 30 27 48 32 29 39 23 31 Short-term permits 10 6 8 4 Annual permits 29 39 43 36 47 39 48 34 32 26 28
Syria Total migrants 34 37 48 40 26 30 49 78 93 243 257 Asylum seekers 12 16 8 12 7 30 52 74 159 219 Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 26 17 22 19 15 7 12 7 12 Short-term permits Annual permits 6 8 10 12 6 7 12 12 8 19 18
Pakistan Total migrants 94 60 67 105 117 104 91 87 120 75 77 Asylum seekers 11 6 14 7 7 9 Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 57 36 47 69 76 62 35 41 73 34 33 Short-term permits 7 6 4 Annual permits 33 19 16 32 36 21 45 30 34 28 31
Sri Lanka Total migrants 57 33 96 114 98 91 50 40 62 62 142 Asylum seekers 6 31 50 58 28 18 8 25 35 105 Establishment permits 8 Int’l officer permits 38 20 42 43 26 42 25 21 24 13 19 Short-term permits Annual permits 7 19 19 13 16 10 11 11 Appendices 91
America
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Brazil Total migrants 319 468 530 600 546 610 455 392 407 358 422 Asylum seekers Establishment permits 10 13 14 19 22 12 11 12 19 16 20 Int’l officer permits 37 73 73 113 121 104 106 84 62 32 50 Short-term permits 51 56 62 44 34 24 14 18 28 19 16 Annual permits 220 326 381 424 369 470 324 278 295 291 336
Canada Total migrants 368 404 376 437 384 420 349 325 380 285 281 Asylum seekers Establishment permits 6 11 9 6 6 6 7 13 7 10 Int’l officer permits 146 158 130 178 188 167 136 134 173 71 75 Short-term permits 78 73 53 62 37 40 51 66 75 91 74 Annual permits 138 169 172 188 153 207 156 118 119 116 122
United States Total migrants 955 1093 1244 1234 1277 1486 1329 1121 1057 792 932 Asylum seekers Establishment permits 16 31 22 28 16 32 20 13 20 17 Int’l officer permits 268 308 409 450 514 553 386 414 398 182 222 Short-term permits 218 211 262 214 153 129 153 268 262 261 312 Annual permits 453 543 551 542 554 772 270 405 377 332 378
Bolivia Total migrants 71 78 109 115 160 180 106 129 134 101 138 Asylum seekers Establishment permits 5 Int’l officer permits 10 7 8 9 12 13 10 8 Short-term permits 15 15 17 6 7 6 Annual permits 46 56 78 98 141 155 97 110 123 98 127
Columbia Total migrants 143 158 167 193 181 175 138 145 149 106 123 Asylum seekers 6 6 Establishment permits 9 9 8 6 Int’l officer permits 41 28 48 44 45 36 37 53 49 16 26 Short-term permits 8 10 7 7 6 6 10 8 Annual permits 82 105 103 133 122 128 89 73 84 81 85
Mexico Total migrants 119 150 139 142 127 113 143 96 121 100 107 Asylum seekers Establishment permits 4 Int’l officer permits 49 52 53 54 69 49 54 45 51 26 28 Short-term permits 11 24 17 10 9 18 26 18 Annual permits 59 74 67 77 51 59 85 42 51 128 57
Peru Total migrants 104 126 125 109 75 89 65 65 71 55 54 Asylum seekers Establishment permits 8 6 Int’l officer permits 30 47 39 33 22 23 12 21 15 17 11 Short-term permits 6 13 11 12 8 8 Annual permits 65 58 74 61 47 56 45 36 46 35 38
Australia Total migrants 158 158 175 228 162 193 159 168 173 112 131 Asylum seekers Establishment permits Int’l officer permits 78 82 87 113 94 97 90 90 106 42 72 Short-term permits 29 22 18 15 12 13 6 14 18 30 13 Annual permits 48 54 67 100 55 83 60 64 46 40 46 92 acknowledgements
Awckno ledgements
For their support, the Fondation pour Genève thanks the institutions, corporations and sponsors that allow it to work on the opening of Geneva to the world
Federation of French-speaking businesses Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services of Geneva Geneva Financial Center Foundation
Pictet & Cie Group SA Lombard Odier SA Mirabaud & Cie Bordier & Cie Richemont International Procter & Gamble JTI International Caterpillar Litasco Bunge Cargill Maus Frères Mediterranean Shipping Company MKS Firmenich PSA International 2