Switzerland

SURPRISE STRASSENFUSSBALL

Since 2003, Surprise Strassenfussball have been reintegrating socially disadvantaged people into Swiss society.

Fourteen teams compete in four national tournaments of the Swiss street football league. Teams must be composed of socially disadvantaged adults with a coach and a manager. Players are often street paper vendors, affected by mental illness, unemployed people, seeking asylum, or suffer from substance abuse.

The league has two levels of competition for different abilities to make sure the games are fair, and the eight players chosen to play on the Swiss national team are from both levels. The team selection criteria are not only based on football skills, but on motivation and self-improvement also.

ORGANISATION DETAILS

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PARTICIPANTS

Unemployed men and women, asylum seekers, and street paper vendors.

LOCATIONS

Nationwide

Country
statistics

2 out of 189 in Human Development Index rating
(UNDP, 2019)

$84, 310 Average annual salary per person (World Bank, 2021)

16% of population living below the national poverty line (UNDP, 2019)

With a population of 8.4 million, Switzerland is a landlocked country in central Europe. It is the partial home of the alps, including the highest point of the alps is, as well as lower lying areas to the south. 74% of people live in urban areas (CIA Factbook, 2019).

Switzerland is host to some 126,000 refugees, with the majority originating from Afghanistan, Algeria, and Turkey (UNHCR, 2021).

A week-long survey in December 2020 of the eight largest cities in Switzerland, using the ETHOS method of measuring homelessness, found 543 people were homeless and the majority live in Geneva.

For every 100,000 people in Geneva, 210 are homeless. In contrast, the study found that in the capital, Zurich, the number was significantly lower, with 29 homeless people per 100,000.

They also found that of the homeless people they surveyed, nearly one third [31%] did not know where they would be sleeping in a week’s time. Of those who were homeless at the time of the survey, 83% were male, while 17% were female. The population in Switzerland is equal between men and women with both making up around 50%. The average age of people who are homeless is 40, with ages of people surveyed ranging from 18-82.

Strikingly the survey also found that four fifths of people who are homeless do not have Swiss nationality, with people surveyed coming from Romania, Nigeria, Algeria and France. Just over 61% were found to have no residency status and were ‘Sans Papiers’ - without papers. They also found a direct link between homelessness and unemployment, as 75% were without work.

The majority [64%] did not believe that social services could support them to find housing. In Geneva this rose to 70% of people who were sceptical about the support social assistance could give them.

Of those surveyed, more than a quarter have no contact with friends while more than a third had no contact with family. They also found that single people are more at risk of homelessness than those in a couple.

Read the full summary of the research by the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland.