The Swiss Student Union between Cold War agenda and the new student condition (working title)

The thesis will focus on the history of the VSS-UNES-USU in the second part of the twentieth century respectively in the Cold War by privileging the international networks of this organisation. The analysis will have three levels: The union as a structure, as a collective actor in Switzerland and as an international partner. On the first level there will be made a prosopography of the active members of the organisation. On the second level the activities and services of the union will be analysed with regard to the question how international contacts and comparisons with other national student unions affected them. On the third level, the study will start from the activity of the international commission/department of the union to then study, more broadly, how this organisation positioned itself in relation to international student organisations and the geopolitics of the Cold War.