Majority of children under six in Switzerland have foreign roots
Between 2019 and 2021, six out of ten children under the age of six were living in a household in which at least one parent was born abroad or is a foreign national.
Hence, 58% of children in this age group have foreign roots, according to an assessment by the Federal Statistical Office published on Sunday in the SonntagsZeitung. In the seven to 15 age group, the proportion of children with an immigrant background was 56%. Ten years earlier, the figures were 54% and 50% respectively.
“We prefer not to publicise these figures for fear of resistance,” says Ganga Jey Aratnam, a researcher into migration, in the newspaper. “But it is important to know what Switzerland will look like in the future.”
+ Immigration spurred Swiss population growth in 2022
This is especially true as the trend continues, he added.
“Among adults, those with an immigrant background are still in the minority, but not for much longer,” he said.
For example, in the city of Zurich 70% of 15-60 year-olds already have roots abroad.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
More
The Théâtre du Jorat, Switzerland’s ‘sublime barn’
More
The difficult search for real Swiss cows
More
A Geneva-based global health foundation came close to ‘collapse’. Where were regulators?
More
Will Switzerland finally do away with imputed rental-value tax on homeowners?
More
Is Switzerland repeating England’s housing mistakes?
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.