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In her book, Andrea Althaus examines the life-stories of female working migrants from Germany and Austria who went to Switzerland to work in domestic service and in the hotel and restaurant industries during the inter- and post-war period. The study sheds light on a significant female migration system of this era, which has been neglected by (traditional) histories of migration due to its focus on the (male) guest worker of the 1960s. Based on a vast number of oral history interviews, the study sets out to include the narratives and experiences of female working migrants within the history of migration. The book also contributes to the historiography of domestic service and female work during the inter- and post-war era. So far, German-speaking historiography on domestic service has focused primarily on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus, this study offers important insights into a scarcely researched era.

Althaus aims at linking personal narratives with structural, political and discursive contexts. She argues that the interpretation of migration narratives is enhanced by taking biographical as well as historical contexts of life-stories into account. By analysing the structural and political preconditions and discourses of migration, she shows that invoking foreign infiltration was not only connected to Italian immigration in the 1960s: it is rooted earlier in the century and was then aimed specifically at Germans. German (and Austrian) women constituted the majority of the German workforce coming to Switzerland at that time. By linking ‘gender’ and ‘nation’ as analytical categories, the study highlights a discourse of migration and foreign infiltration that was not only a nationalized one (against Germans), but also a highly feminized and sexualized one.

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