Wer putzt die Schweiz?

Of the more than 200,000 people who perform cleaning work in Switzerland, most are migrants. Often, we do not notice them; we only realize that our offices are clean again the next morning, the restaurant restrooms have been cleaned, or everything in the hospital has been freshly disinfected. If someone cleans our apartment, we may know them personally, but often not much more than that. In their reports, Marianne Pletscher and Marc Bachmann portray nine individuals and a couple who work or have worked in the low-wage cleaning sector—constantly under pressure to meet legal integration requirements, avoid accumulating debt, and minimize reliance on social assistance. Dragica Rajčić Holzner also shares a poetic account of her life as a former cleaner, where every day everything became dirty again, and her writing was only possible as a "break from cleaning." Those who engage with this book will not simply receive a statistically accurate answer to the question of who cleans Switzerland, but will encounter refugees and immigrants with overwhelming treasures of experience, stories, and pride.