ZURICH — David Trummer’s future is bright. A Swiss doctoral student at ETH Zürich, the country’s most prestigious technical university, his main professional worry is whether to go into the lucrative private sector or to stay in academia to become a professor.
“I do think I want to go and broaden my horizons,” he says about a possible professional detour to the States, “but if I think really far ahead, the dream is make my career back here in Switzerland.”
A country with four national languages that consists of 26 cantons, each with its distinct identity and separate political power, Switzerland is an example of a prosperous and harmonious union. The country has an unemployment rate hovering around 3.7 percent — less than half of the average in the European Union, of which Switzerland is not a member. At a time of rising anti-immigrant views across much of Europe, Switzerland has a foreign population that makes up 24 percent of its 8.1 million residents. The country’s streets are safe and society largely free of strife.
“Switzerland is based on free will rather than on conquest: historically the country always grew because new regions wanted to be part of it,” says Gabrielle Hogan-Brun, a Swiss-born researcher at the University of Bristol.
That non-coercive nature of its history may be why Switzerland is seen as the No. 1 country in the world, according to the U.S. News global survey of more than 21,000 people. Its top ranking comes from consistently high scores in “soft power” areas, such as providing an inclusive society and a high quality of life for its people. In an age when members of the European Union are discussing a future divorced from the trading bloc, Switzerland can seem like an enviable model.
That is until one realizes that Switzerland depends on the bloc both for its export market (in 2015, the country sold nearly 151 billion euros, or $160 billion, worth of goods to EU countries) and its foreign expertise. Despite not having a vote in Brussels, the country also pays into EU coffers to have access to the bloc, although much less than it would as a member.
Which is one of the reasons the mountainous country is subject to some of the same political currents as other European countries. Like the four countries it borders — Germany, France, Italy and Austria — Switzerland is seeing the rise of nationalistic populism. The Swiss People’s Party, with its anti-immigrant agenda, has doubled its voters and number of seats in the national parliament in the past 20 years. The party drew nearly 30 percent of the popular vote in 2015.
And despite the impressive reputation of Swiss-made products, the export market took a hit when during the global recession, although it is back on track now.
Walking the impeccably clean, old streets of almost any city in Switzerland, passing one luxury store or high-end bar after another, one gets the sense that Switzerland is the boutique hotel of Europe. With the exception of the recently gentrified area around Langestrasse in Zurich, which was known as a tawdry red light district, the place consistently presents postcard settings.
“For being so famous and important to the world, Zurich has a very quaint feeling,” says Amanda Cook, a post-doctoral fellow at the ETH Zürich, who hails from California.
Unlike most other places on the continent, Switzerland has not seen war in the past two centuries, and no modern bomb has fallen on the country, a fact that is clearly visible in the architecture and layouts of cities and towns. The country is imbued with a hopefulness that gives credence to the idea that a small, strong country can hold its own in a sea of empires and trading blocs.
Part of the country’s success in determining its own fate is a system of direct democracy seen in few other places. In 2016 alone, the Swiss held 13 separate referenda on four different days. While some of those measures dealt with the more mundane aspects of tending the country, others led to a national discussion about the nation’s direction. The recurring release of a less-than-subtle campaign poster showing white sheep kicking a black sheep out of country (or off the flag) has created a stir in the public discussion of immigration and foreigners.
One of the 12 referenda held in 2014 was a proposal by the National Party to drastically limit migration. It passed by less than 20,000 votes. In a compromise arrangement passed in 2016, Switzerland abandoned the idea of quotas, but guaranteed that employers would have to look — and properly advertise — certain jobs within the country before considering hiring from the EU. Workers from outside of Europe — so called “third-staters” — are very tough to hire, with each canton only accepting several hundred per year. Those third-staters tend to be highly trained foreign experts crucial to the Swiss economy.
If Trummer, a native son of Thon, a tiny medieval city close to the Swiss capital, has a sunny outlook, foreigners are more likely to experience hurdles to becoming part of Swiss society.
“A lot of my friends who came around the time I did, didn’t make it all the way through,” says Mariel Diez, a 30-something Argentinian journalist who moved to the country to be with her Swiss partner. Finding a job can be difficult for non-Swiss, compounding the isolation that can come from living abroad and not speaking one of the country’s four national languages. “I sent out 100 resumes before I was even invited for an interview, and that was for an internship,” says Diez, who now teaches radio programming to children.
She adds that Swiss employers do not know how to judge a person’s education or employment history unless it is in the country. “Many foreigners end up studying in Switzerland to be able to get a job.”
On trains traversing the country, conductors tend not to repeat messages in the country’s four languages, instead switching between languages as soon as the train crosses the invisible line separating the regions. “It’s like the entire atmosphere changes in an instant,” says Hogan-Brun. Most signs and posters in the country tend to be unilingual.
While learning a language can be difficult for foreigners, especially in the German- and Romansh-speaking areas of the country (Swiss French and Italian speakers tend to speak the languages with a less pronounced dialect), the multilingual nature of the country is an enduring source of pride.
“Language is not political in Switzerland,” Hogan-Brun says.
Traditionally, the facility with languages comes from the quality of primary and secondary education, although recently English is displacing other Swiss languages as the second language of choice. It’s precisely the quality of Swiss higher education and the reputation of its graduates that attracts so many foreign companies to Switzerland, according to Regine Sauter, CEO of Zurich chamber of commerce.
“We have top qualified people,” says Sauter, sitting in her office on the top floor of the Zürich stock exchange, “and a great proximity to research and science.”
Google only recently opened its second campus in Zürich, making the city the biggest international center — with some 2,000 employees — outside of the U.S.
Sauter, who is also a national parliamentarian, says the most powerful factors that bring international companies to the country are a highly trained work force, a central location on the continent and the low tax rate.
“It’s not just chocolate and mountains,” she says.
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From the Outside, Switzerland Presents an Idyllic Picture originally appeared on usnews.com
