“Who built Thebes of the seven gates?” Bertolt Brecht asks in his poem Questions from a Worker Who Reads, pointing up the absence of key players in the historical narrative.
From a number of Geneva’s suburbs to major infrastructure projects and the imposing buildings of international organizations, guest workers, together with their colleagues who faced less job insecurity, often immigrants but also Swiss nationals, played an enormous part in literally building Geneva. Their contribution, moreover, wasn’t limited to this emblematic sector since these “seasonal” workers, women and men, were also very much present in agriculture and the hotel and restaurant industry.
By drawing a map of Geneva that highlights the buildings and the underground construction that are the result of these guest workers’ toil, Émilie Gleason, Jeanne Gillard, and Nicolas Rivet offer us a counter-history of the city built by the women and men who did so much for its impressive growth, yet their contribution still remains largely hidden.