The Elephant is the Room

The house of Swiss family policy: how is it built, who built it – and according to which construction plans? Which families are considered worthy of living in this building – and which are not? Who may, must, should and can grow old in it, who can have children and inhabit the house with them – and who cannot? And what does this have to do with migration?

In 1934, a far-reaching law came into force that regulated all these modalities, the Act on the Residence of Foreign Nationals (“Bundesgesetz über Aufenthalt und Niederlassung der Ausländer”, ANAG). The factual rules of the game are quickly summarised: For economic reasons, labour was recruited for a strictly limited period of time; workers were supposed to build and maintain the country’s growing infrastructure for low wages – and without becoming integrated into society. This is the harsh but understandable logic of the labour market. However, if we read the historical context of this law, we are looking into a moral abyss. The ANAG clearly has eugenicist features. For the sake of racial hygiene, it was illegal for immigrants to start a family and reproduce in Switzerland. Their settlement was only permitted as an exception and with great reluctance. The “Fremdarbeiter” (foreign labourers), who were considered particularly fertile and inferior, were seen as a threat to the Swiss national body. A system of rotation and the stigmatising statutes of A (seasonal worker) and B (annual resident) effectively segregated workers from the rest of society and deprived them of the fundamental right to live together with their families. Statutes A and B were a rigorous racist, anti-integrationist, biopolitical measure. From 1934 to 2002, around half a million families from all over southern Europe were traumatised by the violence of these statutes, in some cases severely.

The consequences can still be felt in the third generation. Recent historical research by Paola De Martin and the knowledge stored in the family and body archives of the TESORO association, a human rights organisation that represents the interests of these families, show that those who have suffered from structural violence aimed at preventing them from starting a family in the first place still feel the threatening ghosts of history today. Those affected by the ANAG immigration law and their descendants are confronted with its exclusionary mechanisms and hegemonic power relations when they read certain texts or enter certain rooms – even though the “Saisonnierstatut” (seasonal worker statute) was abolished over two decades ago, in 2002. The history of this “domestic violence” has not become history, but it is not really tangible either. We are currently in a state of collective amnesia.

In 2024 – ninety years after the ANAG came into force – the residue of these historical events will be addressed at ETH Zurich in order to break down this collective amnesia step by step. The symposium and exhibition THE ELEPHANT IS THE ROOM is our attempt to create conditions – for the first time in the country’s history – to facilitate coming to terms with structures that are so deeply ingrained in Switzerland’s unreflected disposition that we can grasp their impact on the present day only by joining forces. It takes courageous collaboration beyond the safe boundaries of our comfort zones if we are to understand the historical and aesthetic dimensions of the asocial architecture of this family policy and the suffering it still causes. THE ELEPHANT IS THE ROOM invites researchers from various disciplines, human rights activists and interested parties from civil society to address these questions together:

How can we trace the suppressed connections between the past and the present, between the migration regime, eugenics and architecture in Switzerland?

How do the latent structures of inequality stored in our immigration laws, co-operative statutes, educational regulations and architectural dogmas manifest themselves in our relationships?

How is this particular form of structural discrimination and privilege stored in border health-control centres, barracks, bachelor houses, garden cities, school buildings, psychiatric institutions, museums, train stations, theatres, universities and hospitals?

What happens to memories when the buildings that housed this violence disappear?

How can research help to defuse their potential to trigger us?

Is this even possible when research itself, its language and its institutions, along with their walls and roofs, are part of the structural violence against migrant families?

The exhibition and symposium were realised by Paola De Martin in collaboration with Melinda Nadj Abonji, Lucia Bernini, the TESORO association, the Chair of the History of Art and Architecture (Prof. Dr. Philip Ursprung) and gta exhibitions. The exhibition is made possible through the kind support of the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF and Office for Combating Racism (“Fachstelle für Rassismusbekämpfung”, FRB).

Opening: 4.10.2024, 6:30 pm