‘He's the Swiss citizen, I'm the foreign spouse’: Binational marriages and the impact of family-related migration policies on gender relations

In Switzerland, like other European countries, family-related migration remains the main means of immigration. Nearly 40 per cent of the immigrants who entered Switzerland between 1998 and 2007 did so for reasons of marriage or family reunification, while only a quarter entered because of employment (SFS 2008). One of the reasons the ratio of family-related immigration to labour immigration is so high is that the Swiss government has traditionally limited the number of employment immigrants, whereas family immigration has not been so tightly controlled.