Gender Innovation and Migration in Switzerland

“This highly informative book provides precisely analysed situations highlighting migration’s crucial role for emancipatory change and hence socio-political innovation. A so far hidden perspective is being made visible and contributes a highly compelling piece for rewriting Switzerland’s history.”—Julia Nentwich, Research Institute for Organisational Psychology, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
“Francesca Falk proposes a migrantisation of the history of gender equality in Switzerland. It was women with experience of migration who were engaged on behalf of women's suffrage with special verve. It was working Italian women in particular who created the conditions for the expansion of childcare infrastructure.”—Elisabeth Joris, Historian, Zurich, Switzerland
“Instead of sidelining issues of migration and gender, as is done so often, this important book teaches us that these perspectives must be central to any substantial narration of Swiss history.”—Patricia Purtschert, Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, University of Bern, Switzerland
This open access book analyses migration and its relation to socio-political transformation in Switzerland. It addresses how migration has made new forms of life possible and shows how this process generated gender innovation in different fields: the changing division of work, the establishment of a nursery infrastructure, access to higher education for women, and the struggle for female suffrage. Seeing society through the lens of migration alters the perspective from which our past and thus our present is told—and our future imagined.
Francesca Falk is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.