The Local has recently asked its readers whether they experienced discrimination when job or flat hunting in Switzerland. Their responses reveal that that this kind of bias does indeed exist.
Reader feedback shows that foreign nationals do experience bias when applying for housing or work.
This despite the fact that Swiss law forbids discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, skin colour, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.
However, reality doesn’t always align with regulations, as the respondents to our survey told us.
For instance, when Naveen first arrived in Switzerland on a short-term L permit, “many agencies simply refused my application, saying I should have at least a B permit. My wife and I ended up in a serviced apartment with no other option available.”
“The stress of several visits, and waiting for the agency to get back to us (mostly with a ‘no’) while sitting in a hotel room is simply not worth it,” he said, adding that the family finally settled for a serviced, but far more expensive flat.
However, it appears that in some cases, the B permit is not the magic key that opens the doors to all apartments,
Seema said she “applied for apartments with a B permit but owner decided to rent to a Swiss person, arguing it was easier from an administrative point of view.”
And Mark from the USA had a similar experience when he applied for a flat: “Owners wanted someone who speaks French. Another said they want tenants who are Swiss.”
The most ‘telling’ example of discrimination while flat-hunting was experienced by Fatima.
“We had our rent raised, but none of the Swiss neighbours did,” she said.
“We were the only ‘brown’ people in the building. We’ve nicknamed this the ‘foreigner mark-up’, as it seems to happen to us more than to our Swiss friends in a variety of contexts. We were also asked what our nationality was when speaking with potential landlords while looking at flats. Others were not asked during the same visits.”
Her advice to other foreigners seeking to rent: “Join the tenants’ association.”
This group, present throughout Switzerland, fights against discrimination on the housing market, while protecting and advocating for tenants’ rights:
READ MORE: Is it worth the fee to join the Swiss Tenants’ Association?
What about jobs?
There too, the survey respondents report cases of discrimination.
J. Slezak from Hungary applied for a position at a Foundation, “but it was not an open procedure and in the end – without much explanation – the organisation gave the job to the son of the vice-president.”
This is what the reader took away from this experience: “Swiss people are very picky and they will accept you only if there is no Swiss person they could employ, even if that person is on a lower professional level. In that case, if they employ you, they will not treat you as equal. There is strong evidence of this in my experience.”
Another testimonial came from Naveen: “I’ve applied to many jobs during a brief period of job hunting. I never even got an acknowledgement for most applications, not even for those which looked exactly like my profile. Admittedly though, most of these were LinkedIn based and not directly through an agency.”
This kind of discrimination – in both the housing and job markets – is not exactly a new phenomenon.
In 2025, the Federal Housing Administration confirmed that apartment seekers with foreign names are allowed to view properties less often than those with typically Swiss names, even though property management companies can’t discriminate on the basis of nationality or ethnic background.
Sociologists from the Universities of Geneva, Neuchâtel and Lausanne also conducted an experimental study on discrimination in the Swiss housing market by sending 11,000 fictitious applications in response to real estate advertisements.
They found that ‘candidates’ with Kosovar or Turkish names were not given as many opportunities to view apartments as non-foreign applicants.
The same type of discrimination exists among employers as well.
Studies conducted by the National Center of Competence in Research, which analyses migration and mobility in Switzerland, revealed that Swiss citizens with foreign backgrounds must submit 30 percent more applications than native Swiss candidates in order to be invited to a job interview — even if their qualifications are the same.
And since this ‘selection’ process is based on names only, it also impacts Swiss citizens.
“Results show that children of immigrants holding Swiss qualifications and dual nationality need to send 30 percent more applications to receive a call-back for an interview when applying for apprenticeship level occupations,” the study found.
READ MORE: Does having a foreign name in Switzerland affect your life?
