ABSTRACT
With its large international community, Geneva is a good place to study migrants. One-third of the population is foreign, and another third consists of Swiss people from other cantons, who may well speak another language, and who often consider themselves as foreign as those from other countries. It is also a good place to make a study of relatively privileged migrants – or expatriates. Several major international organisations and several multinational corporations are based in the city, thereby also attracting the offices of numerous smaller organisations and companies. There is a university, and a cultural and artistic life surprising for a city of some 400,000 inhabitants, with, for example, an international-level orchestra, several theatres, numerous art galleries. All of this means that there is a constant movement of foreign professionals and executives, transferring with their families to take up what are usually planned to be relatively short-term assignments.
