The Gender Gap in Immigration to Switzerland: Evidence from the MMS and Theoretical Insights
When people migrate to Switzerland, their experiences are far from equal. Data from the Migration-Mobility Survey (MMS) show that women are far less likely than men to arrive in the country already employed and are more often moving for family reasons rather than career opportunities. These differences do not disappear after arrival; they shape women’s professional trajectories for years, showing a persistent gender gap in migration that affects both individual lives and the broader Swiss labor market.
In 2025, data from the Migration and Mobility Survey (MMS) reveal an important gender gap among immigrants in Switzerland, particularly regarding employment upon arrival, motivations for migration, and subsequent professional trajectories.
Men are significantly more likely to enter the country with an employment contract: 62% of men report having secured a job before arrival, compared to only 33% of women. This difference reflects broader gendered patterns in migration motivations. Self-declared reasons for migration show that family is the predominant driver for women, whereas men migrate more often for professional or educational purposes. 43% of women cite family as their only reason for migration (compared to 17% of men), while 36% of men report moving exclusively for work or study (compared to 22% of women).
Although migration tends to have a positive overall effect on professional trajectories, a non-negligible share of migrants experience downward mobility, and women are overrepresented within this group. Eleven percent of women report that their professional situation deteriorated after migration, against seven percent of men.
The gender gap is even more pronounced among migrants coming from outside Europe. Generally, family migration is less common among EU/EFTA migrants (34%) than among those originating from outside Europe (56%). Yet within these groups, women rely on family migration much more than men: among non-EU/EFTA migrants, 71 % of women migrate through family channels compared to 38 % of men. By contrast, in the EU/EFTA group, the respective figures are 47% for women and 23% for men.
Employment outcomes mirror this pattern. While 11% of women report a worse professional situation since arrival, that is the case for only 7% of men. That gap is more striking when comparing women from outside Europe and those from Europe (13.3% vs. 9%). Women entering through family reunification also stand out, with 14.4% reporting a significant deterioration in their employment conditions.
Why Do These Gaps Persist: Theoretical Perspectives
How can we interpret these results, which are consistent with existing research documenting gender gaps in migration drivers, job satisfaction, and the risk of “brain waste” among migrant women (Elo et al., 2020; Gerber and Wanner, 2019; Riaño, 2021)? What mechanisms explain these gendered patterns observed in Switzerland and elsewhere?
Underlying all these mechanisms is a dominant gender culture that operates across employers’ and the state’s levels (Pfau-Effinger, 1998). More specifically, the dominant gender culture sets strong expectations for women’s roles in work and family. Producing unequal childcare responsibilities and household arrangements, these norms often limit women’s skills development and professional advancement (Riaño, 2021). This helps explain why family remains the main declared motivation for women’s migration, as their mobility is frequently organized around men’s careers rather than their own.
Migration Policy and Intersectionality in the Reproduction of Labour Market Inequalities
The structure of migration policies reinforces these gender norms and creates different pathways for migrants depending on their country of origin. For non-EU/EFTA nationals, family reunification often becomes the main entry route, as it is less dependent on a job offer. Yet this pathway shapes future opportunities: it influences access to employment, rights, and long-term integration (Sandoz, 2020). Added to this, formal systems for recognizing qualifications remain difficult, especially for third-country nationals, which deepens the professional challenges for women entering through family migration (Pecoraro & Wanner, 2019).
The picture is further complicated as many migrant women experience overlapping disadvantages related not only to gender and migrant status, but also to race, class, and nationality. These intersecting inequalities create specific barriers to employment and career progression, particularly for women from non-EU/EFTA countries (Wastl-Walter et al., 2014).
Occupational Segmentation and Unequal Access to Social Capital
Even for migrant women who manage to overcome these institutional barriers, entry into the labor market often steers them into “feminized” sectors such as care or domestic work, characterized by limited rights and lower pay. Such segmentation limits professional mobility and might explain the downward trajectories observed in the MMS sample.
Social networks also play a decisive role in shaping labor market outcomes, as their role and quality can influence both job access and job quality (Purkayastha, 2005). Women migrating primarily for family reasons may arrive with networks centered around their partners’ professional circles rather than their own career-relevant contacts. Moreover, family and care responsibilities often limit their time and capacity to actively build professional networks and cultivate the social capital necessary for accessing quality employment opportunities matching their qualifications and experience.
Life-Course Perspective on Inequality
Finally, these patterns must be understood within a life-course perspective that captures spatial and temporal dynamics. Inequalities emerge at specific moments (migration, childbirth) and in specific contexts (limited childcare services, restrictive labor markets) (Riaño, 2021). The intersection of arriving through family reunification and facing subsequent family responsibilities creates critical junctures where women’s professional trajectories diverge from those of men. Specific moments exacerbate the cumulative disadvantages identified above and help explain the empirical evidence observed in the MMS data.
The Paradox of Underutilized Migrant Talent as One Consequence of the Gender Gap in Migration to Switzerland
The MMS data show a clear gender gap in migration to Switzerland: women are more likely to migrate for family reasons, arrive more often without a job contract than men, and experience downward professional mobility more often than men. These outcomes are especially marked among migrants from outside the EU/EFTA.
Theoretical perspectives highlight that these gaps cannot be reduced to individual choices or cultural traditions. Instead, they are deeply embedded in structural features of migration policy, labor market institutions, and prevailing gender norms.
Switzerland faces a major paradox: while the country is experiencing a shortage of talent in many economic sectors, a significant portion of its migrant population remains underutilized in the labor market. This tension between labor shortage and untapped human capital has brought renewed attention from the media and political spheres to previously overlooked migration categories, particularly family reunification (Dinh, 2025; Riaño, 2025; Tages Anzeiger, 26.09.25).
The implications are significant, and the cases of family reunified individuals are gaining increasing traction in the media and political spheres. Yet if migration policies continue to channel women through family reunification, while failing to facilitate the recognition of foreign qualifications and experiences, the problem of “brain waste” will persist – not only as an individual cost for highly skilled women, but also as a collective loss for Switzerland’s labor market and society. Addressing this issue requires acknowledging that family reunification does not represent a separate category from economic concerns, but rather an untapped reservoir of skills that could directly help alleviate Switzerland’s current labor shortage.
Mélinda Dinh is a doctoral student in the nccr – on the move project “The Role of Gender, Skills, and Status on the Impact of Crises,” studying how migration motives, especially family reunification, affect labour market integration.
Dr. Robin Stünzi is Senior Researcher at the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies and the Education, Careers and Equal Opportunities Officer of the nccr – on the move at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
References:
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–Pecoraro, M., & Wanner, P. (2019). Does the recognition of foreign credentials decrease the risk for immigrants of being mismatched in education or skills?. In Migrants and expats: The Swiss migration and mobility nexus (pp. 161-186). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
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