45 Chapter 2. The Swiss Carnivals of Payerne and Lausanne … as soon as the Roma arrive in town because they had a reputation as thieves. This prejudice was also expressed by porcelain and cutlery in vitrines, underlined by the written sentence “Je suis venu, j’ai volé, j’ai revendu” (‘I came, I stole, I sold’). Finally, a caravan and a brimming dustbin were featured, reinforcing the prejudice that the Roma neither separate garbage nor buy the expensive compulsory plastic bags in which the waste must nowadays be put due to a new regional law. Fig. 1. The representation of the Roma during the Brandons de Payerne, 2013 (Photo: Monika Salzbrunn) In Switzerland, the Other, a target of laughter and sometimes hate, can be anybody, but recently several media and election campaigns have focused on Muslims (Behloul 2013: 24–26). In 2016, one year after the arrival of more than a million refugees in Germany and 39,523 in Switzerland (Staatssekretariat für Migration 2015), the subject of the main float during the Brandons de Payerne were Syrian refugees. A boat with surrounding waves was covered by the sentence “Sy-rien ne va plus, on débarque chez vous.” This wordplay is difficult to translate, with two possible readings, i.e. (1) ‘If nothing goes anymore, we turn up at your place’ (Si rien ne va plus, on débarque chez vous), and
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