Back to the Balkans – Why do Secondos and Secondas move away from Switzerland? (German)

15 comments
  1. Nice to hear that they are going back to “Motherland” and make their life there. In most cases a good thing.

  2. They give 0 statistics and only tell story of 3 people in the article while writing ” 2nd generation of immigrants running away from Switzerland”, which make this article sound like a clickbait.

    Reason they give for moving is 1 guy saying it’s cheaper to open business in a poorer country and take risks as its cheaper to do it. Guy is planning to move back to Switzerland if his business plan doesn’t work.

    They didn’t even give any reason for the women with kid and only said her parents are not supportive at her decision to move back to their former country, and how she is happy that just like her, her child also will be raised with Swiss and Bosnian identity together, It’s pretty much it.

  3. Pretty common for people with foreign heritage to explore their roots, and for some percentage to figure out that they like their ancestral land/culture/cuisine/whatever better, and decide to move there.

    Especially considering how much the Balkans have stabilised, I don’t see anything particularly strange about that.

  4. As a white immigrant with an in-high-demand degree in Switzerland (even from Eastern Europe originally but not many people know I guess), I felt puzzled when some less fortunate (i.e., less white, no in-high-demand degree) fellow immigrants complained about facing a lot of racism in Switzerland.
    If the comments in this thread are representing the reality, I understand my friends much better now. Oh, and I am disgusted!

  5. So wait; we pay a lot of money so that they are well educated, well behaved and they know our culture and values. And the first time they could pay back something they go back to the country their parents run away because it was so terrible there?

    Something isn’t right.

  6. I know a couple who came with their kids in the 90s from the Balkans (the couple is about my parents’ age – so just newly retired). They have held steady jobs here their whole lives, but low, sub-standard pay, scummy employers (Some said they would pay into AHV but didn’t – couple didn’t know how to fight against it and didn’t want to lose the employment they did have). Never unemployed.

    But now that they’ve retired, they only have the AHV to live from which isn’t enough to live a normal life as a retiree in Switzerland in most places. Find an affordable apartment in the more rural area? Good luck with that when your family name ends in -ic.
    Pensionskasse? Because of the low pay, too little to really make a difference in their standard of life. Savings? Forget it, wasn’t possible because of said low wage. The little they could save, they put into their kids’ education, as most loving parents would.

    Because of their Balkan origins and low socioeconomic status, they have been belittled, looked down upon and discriminated against all the time while in Switzerland – and it *was* their home for almost four decades. They “just” cleaned old Swiss people’s asses, and held the old Swiss people’s hands while they were confused, demented, crying and dying and their family couldn’t/wouldn’t visit them in the nursing homes; and built Swiss people’s homes and streets and infrastructure. They were only “aggro, lazy yugos” with crappy German who always gave it their all.

    I dare any Swiss person in Switzerland to migrate or “expat” to an entire new country and learn a completely new language accent-free, from scratch. In your fourties or late thirties. Like Mandarin, or Singaporean Chinese, or Korean, or whatever else non-Roman-based.

    The couple made the sensible “choice” (not really much of a choice, all things considered) to move back to the Balkans, away from their kids who have found more rooting here.

  7. Most people I know that left is because they were never accepted fully here, lots of racism and ignorance. I feel the same as soon as i get out of my friends group and into average swiss group of people. I have a few swiss friends and they are amazing, but if I ever leave it will happen because of how people threat me here base on my “ić” surname.

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