Histories and Legacies of Migrant Labour in Namibia and Switzerland

Raffaele Perniola, Luregn Lenggenhager, Giorgio Miescher, Saima Nakuti Ndahangwapo

• Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9783906927671
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Index: Social Sciences

This edited volume shows surprising similarities in labour history and its legacy in two different contexts: South African occupied Namibia and Switzerland in the second half of the 20th century. Both the apartheid state and post-war Switzerland established an exploitative migrant labour system. In the Swiss case, migrant labourers came on seasonal contracts from poorer southern-European countries such as Italy and Spain and later Turkey or the Balkan states. In the Namibian case the sending areas of the migrant labour were defined as African reserves and later 'independent' homelands, allowing the workers to be treated as foreigners by the state. The systems aimed at fast-tracking economic growth and safeguarding the nations from crises by setting quotas of 'imported' cheap labour to be lowered or increased according to the needs of the economy. In both cases migrant labourers had only very limited rights and they were marginalised or outright excluded from participation in public life and society in their places of work.

Table of contents

• Front cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction | Postcolonial Soundings of Xenophobia and Racism in Switzerland
• 1 | A Short History of the Migrant Labour System in Namibia
• 2 | The Seasonal Migrant in Twentieth-Century Switzerland: The Harm to Foreigners and to the International Reputation of the Swiss Confederation
• 3 | Trade Unions and the Reform of the Migrant Labour Systems in Namibia and Switzerland, 1970–2007
• 4 | Public Remembrance of Contract Labour Systems in Namibia and Switzerland
• 5 | Feeding Narratives: The Politics of Storytelling in the Context of Contract Labour Migration
• Back cover