«Roots becoming Routes»: Migration and Entangled Histories between Peru and Switzerland

The main question of my PhD-project focusses the reasons, tactics, longings or structural conditions that motivate Swiss people to leave their country and live – temporarily or long-term – somewhere else. Secondly, it explores how processes of transnationalisation as well as concepts of national affiliation – such as the political concept of “Fifth Switzerland” – influence the identity constructions of the “Swiss abroad”.

The investigation is based on a ethnographic case study about Swiss migrants in Peru with a specific focus on the Swiss – Peruvian entangled history after World War II when governmental and economic relations between Switzerland and Peru intensified. Referring to Stuart Hall’s demand for a change of perspective from ethnic “roots” to the “routes” of people in the sense of cultural connections due to their geographical mobility, I am tracing the subject of research, the “routes”, over temporal and spatial relations attempting to shed light on the entangled migratory projects of Swiss citizens in Peru.