How Second Generation Immigrant Writers Have Transformed Swiss and German Language Literature: A Study of Authors from the Swiss ‘Secondo-Space’

Author(s) : Margrit Verena Zinggeler

Source : http://scholar.google.ch/scholar_url?url=http://www.academia.edu/download/63375365/ZINGGELR_Secondo_5202020.pdf&hl=fr&sa=X&d=12806794925286179664&scisig=AAGBfm21GV5gjZ7Tfe2cyw7IR_8aASJ1BA&nossl=1&oi=scholaralrt&hist=s34qtlQAAAAJ:642631476429299750:AAGBfm155V6IMX2cG2bwU4KUJLLjRHynAQ

Source : https://www.swissbib.ch/Record/25963882X

“Although the awarding of the 2010 German and Swiss Book Prizes to Melinda Nadj Abonji, for her book Tauben fliegen auf, has drawn attention to Secondo Literature in Switzerland, there has not been a comprehensive look at this subject. In her broadly conceived and meticulously researched study, Margrit Zinggeler imbeds historical, social, literary, biographical, and sensorial aspects, and thus goes beyond more narrowly focused treatments of this segment of German Swiss literature.
The study is divided into two parts. In the first part, Zinggeler gives the necessary background information, and depicts in broad strokes the history of migration and the development of migrant literature in Germany and Austria after World War II, contrasting it with the situation in Switzerland, where Italian and Spanish guest-workers themselves coined the term Secondos and Secondas—referring to their feeling of being second-class people. Since then, the meaning of the term has changed and loosely defines second generation immigrants, all people born in Switzerland of foreign parents, or those who immigrated at an early age. Often children of mixed marriages also call themselves Secondos and Secondas.”