The multinational pharmaceutical companies in Basel attract more highly skilled workers from abroad. Already, eight percent of the population of Basel expats. "Since these are largely from the upper middle class, one can assume that about ten percent of consumption are made by expatriates who pay even ten percent of the taxes," said Guy Morin, President of the Government of Basel-Stadt.

"We need this talent, so we have to offer them good conditions and facilitate their integration," continued Morin. The study "Potentials and challenges of integration expats in the Basel region" is intended to demonstrate ways to do so. "Basel is a model for Switzerland and will continue to play a leading role in the integration of the expats," says the President of the Government.

More originally in DE ( and a crude translation to EN here )

Figures at a glance:

Basel expats -

In the cantons of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Land is home to around 36,000 expats.

This represents approximately 8% of the population. Foreigners in itself there are many more (see below).

But expatriates are highly qualified, skilled workers from abroad who are financially and come for professional reasons for short-term assignments (2-4 years) in Switzerland.

Around three quarters of expats to stay longer than 2 years, almost 60% stay more than 4 years in Switzerland.

Foreigners:

Of the 467'129 118'091 inhabitants of the two half-cantons are foreigners. This corresponds to 25.3%.
Foreigners BS: 63'791
Foreigners BL: 54'300

(Dec. 2010)

Study Report in PDF DE

Could be interesting to see numbers of people who immigrate here and aren't expats. The amount of foreigners with expats and immigrants all included most be very high!

Expat? Foreigner? I thought I was both of those. Upper middle class? Does that mean people earning 120,000 a year ( and wondering if it is enough......

It's nice to be appreciated

It should be 'earners' not 'class'.
Johnny foreigner simply has no understanding of the British class system.

Upper middle class people are not to be found slaving away for big pharma.

Probably because the article wasn't writed for the Brits only...

For other people around the world, Upper Middle Class fits the description?

But it fits by the American class system....

Having "class" and having "money" should never be confused as being the same thing.

Indeed - often confused, especially here

History DOES repeat itself ! It was in the late 1950ies, early 60ies, when Swiss "specialists" went out to Italy etc to search for workers for the Swiss economy (construction/gastronomy/tourism/public-services).

Workers arrived, but people came, and within a few years, many Swiss wanted to throw everybody out. But the Schwarzenbach Initiative was clearly rejected.

Indeed. What's the difference?

"An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence. The word comes from the Latin term expatriātus from ex ("out of") and patriā the ablative case of patria ("country, fatherland"), from Greek Exo (outside) and Patrida (Fatherland, Country)."

i.e. someone not born in the country they are living in.

Tom

The class system as in "real thing, the one and only, orignial often copied never ever matched up" system is in the UK and nowhere else. There is absolutely no point even mentioning it on the continent as nobody, absolutely nobody knows the real thing.

On the continent, it is a question of money and/or origins. Earnings put you on a Kaufkraft scale (power of you money spending?? Buying power??) and that's it. Anything else is purely local, like the special very peculiar parisian society or Hamburg Bürgerschaft ot that kind of things.

Therefore: Never use the word class in the real english meaning ever on the continent, EVEN IF the poeple you are talking to think that they know what it is. They don't. I got that straightened up a couple of years ago and avoid many misunderstandings since I have understood that, standing at the other side of the communication line, of course.

Basel has Deig, richer business locals, middle earning mass and working people.
Müstair has indigens (locals), indigens who were adopted, esters (strangers, people from outside the valley), Südtiroler and tourists.
...
make the list of social groups in your city, but it will not be "class" as understood in the british dictionnary. And you all know how much I care for meaning and definitions of words and blame half of the world for not looking often enough in the dictionnary the meaning of the words they use.

and so that, anyone from the Mediterranean Basin, living in Switzerland !

Indeed.

Well, I've been here 9 year and have effectively settled, so I guess I'm a foreigner, not an expat.

I have to whole heartedly agree with you Faltrad.

Although the dictionary definition is just someone who's living outside of their country of birth, most people, take 'expat' to mean higher earning temporary residents, who tend to have quite a high level of education and who may or may not conform to some rather unpleasant stereotypical behaviours.

While the Italian diplomatic service regards as "Expats" anyone who is living outside Italy, regardless of education and income .... I mean anyone of Italian origin . And so do the diplomatic services of all the other countries around the Med

Italian diplomatic services have a good dictionnary. The word expatriate can only be used from the point of view of the people staying at the place left behind. From a Swiss perspective, we are impatriated, we came into the patria, which is pretty much what the word immigration means in the first place.

When someone in CH, who left another place, calls him/her-self expatriate, he/she puts him/her-self into the perspective of the place he/she left behind: his/her mind stayed behind and the body sailed away... Freud sends his greetings.

EDIT: Last sentence is a attempt to translate "Freud lässt grüssen".

This of course shows the problem of the Secondos. They never "left" the old place and in actual fact are based here . But in some ways, often due to looks, skin colour, hair colour, shape of face, physical appearance, get not really accepted as a "native CH". But may be, in the relevant CH language, may be better than the actual CH-natives, which is not so positively taken by the CH natives as you might expect

Soon the integration of expats in Basel community will no longer be an issue:
Roche is laying off people, Syngenta is going through the major restructuring and Novartis is successfully building its back office in India.

The good news is that people will have no more doubts of how to call themselves: expats, inpats, or just Gastarbeiters )

thats why Novartis is investing billions of CHF to the Campus?