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This week the all-male Swiss electorate will vote on a nationwide referendum that seeks to reduce the foreign population from the current 16% to 10%, and would thus require the expulsion of 300,000 workers. Says Zurich Deputy James Schwarzenbach, who has led the Uberfremdung fight, "They call me a new Hitler, but that's a lie. I just want to feel at home in my own country." Once, it was expected that the referendum would be defeated by a wide margin, largely because it would deal a harsh blow to the Swiss economy. Said the Tribune de Genève: "If Schwarzenbach has his way, it will mean that the Swiss will have to go back to work." Nonetheless, the vote may be extremely close.
Unspeakable Cases. Housing is a problem for migrant workers all over Europe, but in France it has virtually become a matter of national shame. At Ivry, in southeast Paris, a "sleep seller" was granted permission three years ago to house 150 Africans temporarily in a former chocolate factory. Subsequently, he increased the number of lodgers to 600, with many bunks occupied 24 hours a day on a three-shift basis. Last January, five Africans died of asphyxiation while trying to keep warm in a crumbling house at Aubervilliers near Paris.
The resulting public outcry caused Premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas to visit the bidonville at Nanterre, whose 1,000 Moroccans, Tunisians and Algerians give it the look and smell of an Arab slum outside any big North African city. Shocked by the conditions in which the North Africans were living, he promised: "By the end of the year we shall have dealt with these unspeakable cases. By the end of 1971 we intend to solve the entire problem." Since that time the government has restricted the formerly free flow of Algerians into France, and has quietly adopted a policy of restricting black immigrants.
The Darker Side. In social terms, the gap between what the Germans call the Gastarbeiter (guest worker) and his host has remained wide. EUROPEANS ONLY signs have become a commonplace in the vicinity of the Sorbonne, and SOUTHLANDERS NOT ACCEPTED is a standard phrase in room-for-rent ads in Zurich. Rejected as garlicky inferiors, the workers are also baffled by cultural differences. A German girl who might welcome the famous Italian approach while vacationing on the Adriatic resents a pinch or a loud pass on Wolfsburg's Porschestrasse. In Sweden, an Italian or Yugoslav haled into court on a rape charge is apt to be genuinely puzzled; after all, when a girl accepts an invitation to visit a man's room, she must be kidding when she insists that coffee is all she wants.
In some respects, the northward migration demonstrates what British Journalist Anthony Sampson, in his Anatomy of Europe, called "the darker side of [European] prosperity." Yet the returning workers also represent a new hope for their native lands. Thousands of Italians, coming home from Frankfurt and Lille and Basel, have been eagerly absorbed by Italy's skill-short industries. Thousands more have used their savings to buy a piece of land, a café or a gas station in the Italian south.