“The Way to School between Two Worlds”: Documenting the Knowledge of Second-Generation Immigrant Children in Switzerland, 1977–1983

Abstract

In the late 1970s , the “second generation” took center stage in the ongoing public debates on immigration in Switzerland. This generation also took the lead in the first Swiss documentary film project on this topic, Unsere Eltern haben den Ausweis C (“Our Parents Have a Residence Permit”). This two-part cinematic portrait of “second-generation foreign children” in Switzerland was produced and directed by the Swiss filmmaker Eduard Winiger between 1977 and 1982. Each part was sixty-six minutes long. The first, “Schichtwechsel” (“Shift Change”), depicted the initial stages of immigration to Switzerland, the immigrant parents’ workplaces, and the strains of organizing preschool care for their children. The second part, “Schulweg zwischen zwei Welten” (“The Way to School between Two Worlds”), focused on the particular challenges that immigrant adolescents faced with regard to the life plans of their parents and the expectations of the host society, the latter represented by the school. Seen from an epistemological perspective, “The Way to School between Two Worlds” shows how three different dimensions ofmigrant knowledge intersected in the making of the second generation in Switzerland.