Demographic and economic consequences of international migration in high‐income countries depend on the patterns of flows, which have changed profoundly since WWII. We investigate how the increase in highly skilled migrants shaped the geography of flows, the age, sex and family composition and the international mobility of immigrants in Switzerland between 1966 and 2019. The large‐scale circulation of predominantly male migrants from neighbouring countries in the 1960s transformed into a more permanent inflow alongside a dominance of women and families originating from all over the world in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, the turn of the new Century was marked by a renewed regionalization, ageing and masculinization of immigration, which is focusing on urban agglomeration centres and again characterised by high levels of international mobility. These changes were associated with the rise in highly skilled migration and call for a re‐interpretation of the societal consequences of recent flows.