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Four out of ten Swiss residents have migration background

Paleo concert near Nyon.
People wait for a concert to start at the Paleo music festival in Nyon, western Switzerland, in 2011. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

The percentage of Swiss residents over 15 with a migration background rose by 1% to reach the 40% mark last year, new figures reveal.

Federal Statistical Office figures published on Monday show that in 2022 2,951,000 permanent residents were of migrant origin in 2022.

Nearly 80% of these people were born abroad and are therefore part of the first generation (2,342,000 people).

+ Two-thirds of Swiss voters concerned about immigration, says survey

Of the 2,951,000 permanent residents with a migrant background, 38% have Swiss nationality. The most common foreign nationalities are Italian (10%), German (9%), Portuguese (7%), French (4%), Kosovar (3%) and Spanish (3%).

+ Immigration: foreign resident population increases by 47,200

The term migration background applies to those without a Swiss passport, those who have become Swiss and those who were born in Switzerland to parents who were born abroad.

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

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