The biannual conference was inaugurated by the co-organizers Zdeňka Stoklásková (Masaryk University Brno / SKÖTH), Philipp Ther (RECET, University of Vienna / SKÖTH) and Mojmir Stransky (RECET, University of Vienna). On behalf of the SKÖTH, Luboš Velek and Stefan Newerkla greeted the audience, followed by Arnold Obermayr from Austria’s Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs.
As Ther pointed out in his opening remarks, there has been more immigration to Austria per capita after 1989 than to the United States. This, however, does not explain why the issue became a key topic of political struggles in Austria. The relatively weak academic research on the topic could also be blamed on a lack of public awareness.
The conference program followed a retrospective timeline, partly to avoid a progress-oriented discourse. This “archaeology of knowledge” approach is particularly useful when it comes to topics loaded with socially, or even politically, prominent stereotypes. There were four panels dealing with migration in and to Austria, the Czech Republic and Austria-Hungary from 1780 to 2021, or rather 2021 to 1780, to acknowledge the methodological premise of the organizers.
The first panel presented various approaches to Labor migration in contemporary Austria and the Czech Republic. ANNA LUKEŠOVÁ (Prague) examined the civic integration policies in Austria and Czechia. She described both national immigration programs as being centralized (national governance), the Czech attitude being, however, rather depoliticized with no strong local trends. The Austrian program was presented as more politicized and with a stronger role for the provinces, but afflicted by conflict between the central and local authorities. Gudrun Biffl added that each European Union (EU) country is obliged to have a (civic) integration strategy that takes into account both national and local perspectives. Dušan Drbohlav contested the idea of the depoliticization of integration.
ONDŘEJ DANIEL (Prague) presented a work-in-progress paper on Czech and Austrian representations of migrant cultures. He described various stereotypes that have been applied to immigrants from the post-Soviet countries as well as to those from the Middle East. Daniel explained that, in his future research, he will pursue a theoretically founded comparison grounded in the concepts of non-colonial racism, class-sensitivity, new xenophobia, and gendered and cultural racism.
The second panel was dedicated to guest workers in post-World War II Austria. MAXIMILIAN GRAF (Prague) described in-depth the historical roots of postwar migration to Austria. He first addressed the migration from Yugoslavia and Turkey. Later, the two oil shocks changed the discourse in Austria completely as higher competition for jobs raised xenophobia among Austrians. The turning point came with the political tensions and worsening economic situation in Poland in 1981. The Kreisky government turned its back on economic migrants in favor of political refugees. Later in the 1980s, however, a more restrictive approach to the granting of political asylum took hold. In his conclusions, Graf corrected the common image of Austria “happily inviting political or economic refugees” by offering a more case-sensitive approach.
GUDRUN BIFFL (Krems) presented a paper on migration to Austria after the fall of the Iron Curtain. According to Biffl, Austria is not an immigration country by self-definition, unlike the United States. This does not, however, mean that immigration is less important for Austria than it is for the United States. Biffl showed how the number of foreigners grew in Austria from under 2 per cent in 1946, to 4.5 per cent in 1989 and to 17.6 per cent in 2020, the last being an even higher percentage than in the United States, which is perceived as a more traditional immigration country.
The third panel was devoted to the topic of guest workers in postwar Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. DUŠAN DRBOHLAV (Prague) analyzed the Ukrainian labor migration to Czechia from a social geographic perspective. He described the peculiarities of the Czech labor market as being the most important reason for Ukrainian labor migration to the country: the low geographic mobility of Czechs combined with the high cost of labor and demographic factors. In 2020, 633,000 immigrants lived in the Czech Republic, of which 165,000 were Ukrainians. A survey of potential future migrants undertaken by experts among 1,000 respondents in Ukraine in 2019 revealed the main factors facilitating or hindering their migration.
BARBORA NOVÁKOVÁ (Prague) spoke about Vietnamese migrant workers before and after 1989/1993 in Czechoslovakia/Czechia. At the beginning of the Vietnamese migration to Czechoslovakia, there was Eastern Bloc aid for the Democratic (later Socialist) Republic of Vietnam. The number of Vietnamese in Czechoslovakia grew from approximately 3,500 workers and trainees in 1973 to 24,073 in 1988. After 1989, a major change came in the lifestyles of the Vietnamese immigrants. They devoted themselves to profitable international commercial trade, and many of them went from being employees to business people. Nováková described how the migration of the Vietnamese, which was intended and regarded as temporary in the period prior to 1989, resulted in the creation of a well-established permanent minority (approximately 60,000).
ONDŘEJ VOJTĚCHOVSKÝ (Prague) presented a paper on Yugoslav construction workers in socialist Czechoslovakia. Due to a shortage of workers in Czechoslovakia and the demand for high quality, specialized services, Yugoslav construction workers were called in in the 1960s. After the global economic stagnation in the 1970s, Yugoslav construction offers were, however, mostly declined by the Czechoslovak side. The short-term presence of Yugoslav workers led to the emergence of a temporary, small diaspora rather than the creation of a permanent minority. Nevertheless, after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, some refugees chose Czechoslovakia as their new home thanks to their already established family members in the country.
Keynote speaker MICHAL FRANKL (Prague) presented a finely structured historiographical overview of refugee research in Czechoslovakia. He mentioned the anti-Soviet and the anti-Nazi refugees after 1918 and 1933. While the latter remained a short-lived episode, the former were intended as a long-term integration project that was, however, more or less discontinued by the Soviets after 1945.
The second keynote speaker RAINER BAUBÖCK (Florence/Vienna) compared Austria’s immigration policy to the rest of the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). However, he contested the common majority-minority discourse by mentioning some examples. Among the population under 18 in the United States, white, non-Hispanic people will no longer form a majority by 2045, making them a future minority. On the other hand, he refused the “Great Replacement” concept – which suggests that Muslims will become the future majority in Europe – as a conspiracy theory. Today’s anti-immigration rhetoric might change in the future, though, if people (especially young people) realize the economic necessity of migration.
The last panel was dedicated to labor migration in the 18th and long 19th centuries. ROUMIANA IL. PRESHLENOVA (Sofia) talked about migration from Bulgaria to Austria-Hungary and claimed that it is no wonder that, in 1888, the first railway connection that was established between Bulgaria and Central Europe led to Vienna. The Bulgarian colony in Cisleithania counted 481 persons in 1890 and 813 in 1910. Of these, the majority stayed in Vienna, mostly as merchants or students, and they were even mentioned alongside Romanians by Heimito von Doderer in his famous novel “Die Strudlhofstiege”. There were also 200 Bulgarians in Bohemia, mainly students at (Czech) Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague.
ZDĚNKA STOKLÁSKOVÁ (Brno) depicted how state policy (the economic raison d’État) hindered labor migration within and to Austria during the Enlightenment. However, she contested the idea that the existence of the late feudal system (the patrimonial system) prevented labor migration entirely, as she documented through statistical evidence the presence of non-locals in early industrial Brno. She also mentioned the presence of Italian specialists in railway tunnel construction prior to the fall of patrimonialism in 1848.
WERNER DROBESCH (Klagenfurt) painted a meticulously researched image of the social and economic transformation of the Austrian Lands from the agrarian period to the early industrial one. In comparison to Bohemia, he spoke of a “delayed industrialization and modernization”. He distinguished between progressive regions that became destinations of internal migration and economically stagnant districts which were characterized by population losses.
ANNEMARIE STEIDL (Vienna) and JESSICA RICHTER (St. Pölten) addressed not only emigration and immigration, but above all the internal migration in Austria(-Hungary). Steidl dismissed the inflexible characterization of emigrants and immigrants which is not suitable for describing the migration within Austria. She used a unique survey from 1913 to demonstrate that most of the internal migration in Austria was directed towards neighboring region. Richter added her analysis of the domestic service personnel.
Interestingly, many participants refused the binary categories of, for example, immigrant/emigrant (regions of immigration / regions of emigration), majority/minority, and similarity/difference, seeing these as static or inflexible, and these participants advocated a more nuanced approach. (Labor) Migration as a dynamic process in itself seems to contest the established terminology that – among other factors – fosters the anti-immigration political discourse in today’s Europe. If academics were able to spread their knowledge effectively, they could challenge the advancement of populism in Europe that is based on the very same vocabulary that the conference has called into question.
Conference overview:
Panel 1 – Approaches to Labor Migration
Anna Lukešová (Charles University, Prague): Multi-level Governance of (Civic) Integration Policies in Austria and Czechia
Ondřej Daniel (Charles University, Prague): Ex Oriente Obscuro? Czech and Austrian Representations of Migrant Cultures from Eastern Europe and Eastern Mediterranean
Panel 2 – Guest Workers in Postwar Austria
Maximilian Graf (Czech Academy of Science, Prague): From Refugees to Labor Migrants: Austria and Migration from Eastern Europe
Gudrun Biffl (Donau University, Krems): Migration to Austria after the Fall of the Iron Curtain
Panel 3 – Labor Migration to Postwar Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic
Dušan Drbohlav (Charles University, Prague): Ukrainian Labor Migration to Czechia
Barbora Nováková (Charles University, Prague): Vietnamese Migrant Workers before and after 1989/1993
Ondřej Vojtěchovský (Charles University, Prague): Yugoslav Construction Workers in Czechoslovakia from the 1960s to the 1980s
Keynotes
Michal Frankl (Czech Academy of Science, Prague): Biographies or Statistics? Historiographic Approaches to Refugees to Czechoslovakia
Rainer Bauböck (European University Institute, Florence/Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, retired): Central European Immigration Countries in Self-Denial? Some Lessons from the Austrian Case
Panel 4 – Labor Migration in the 18th and the long 19th Century
Roumiana Il. Preshlenova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia): Labor and Study Migration from Bulgaria to Austria-Hungary from the Late 19th Century to the End of World War I
Zděnka Stoklásková (Masaryk University, Brno): Labor Migration in the Long 19th Century: State, Individuals, Travel Documents
Werner Drobesch (University of Klagenfurt): From Proto-Industry to Industry: Labor Migration in the Inner Austrian Lands during the Vormärz Period
Annemarie Steidl (University of Vienna) and Jessica Richter (Institute of Rural History St. Pölten): Many Ways to Migrate! Migrants´ Practices off the Beaten Tracks