Sieglinde Rosenberger

Religious Organisations as Political Actors in the Context of Migration: Islam and Orthodoxy in Austria

This paper investigates how immigration and concerns over integration are changing established modes of cooperation between church and state in Austria. Focusing on the relationship between officially recognised Muslim and Eastern Orthodox organisations and the state, we examine how the mounting politicisation of immigrant integration has led the state to collaborate with minority religious organisations as representatives of immigrants and is increasing the opportunities for such religious groups to be visible and express voice in the public sphere. Based on interviews, policy documents and literature, we analyse how the modes of cooperation between religious organisations and the state are moving from a narrow and institutionalised collaboration on policy issues exclusively related to religion to a broader but more fluid and uncertain form of symbolic cooperation. We argue that, within this modified setting, recognised minority religious organisations are gradually assuming the function of political entrepreneurs who speak for the entire immigrant community. This, in turn, creates tensions within and between religious groups, and risks overstating religion as a factor in the integration of immigrants. Our comparison between Muslim and Eastern Orthodox religious organisations shows that, notwithstanding the greater salience of Islam, they both benefit from the new role of religion in integration issues.

Tracing Anti-deportation Protests: A Longitudinal Comparison of Austria, Germany and Switzerland

To identify long-term patterns of anti-deportation mobilization this chapter uses a social movement-inspired, systematic analysis of news reports of anti-deportation protest events in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (1993–2013). Articles were manually coded, and changes over time and differences across countries were examined using descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis. The chapter examines differences and similarities in the frequency of protest, main actors, protest forms, and claims made. The frequency of protest activities has increased in Austria and Germany, but not so in Switzerland. In the vast majority of events, actors protest in solidarity and on behalf of designated deportees. Grass-root organizations without personal ties to the person affected and social movements that seek social or political change appear most often as main actors. The specific protest events in the three countries are strongly influenced by local and national particularities, but there are similarities in the protests against deportations across countries and over time that suggest a certain kind of transnational protest movement. The chapter identifies anti-deportation protests as solidarity protests that are organized mostly on a local level and focuses on individual, case-specific solutions rather than demands for social or legal change of the deportation regime.

Protest Against the Reception of Asylum Seekers in Austria

This chapter investigates anti-migration mobilization, in particular the emergence and success of restrictionist protest activities against the establishment of accommodation centers for asylum seekers in Austria. Based on media reports, official documents, municipal gazettes and protest material, we analyze 113 protest cases in the context of rising asylum applications with the tools of social movement research, focusing on actors, repertoires, frames and outcomes of collective action. Asylum-center protest is characterized as local, small-scale, institutionalized and successful in terms of achieving its main implementation claims. Ideological and material opposition towards ethnic and cultural diversity is expressed in frames of belonging, distribution and democracy. Institutional and discursive opportunities explain the emergence of protest activities, whereas their high rate of success is to be understood by endogenous protest characteristics, in particular the specific protest network, which is dominated by institutional protagonists equipped with powerful political resources.

Political Protest in Asylum and Deportation. An Introduction

Asylum and the deportation of third-country nationals have grown into one of Europe’s most politicized topics. Social and protest movements that include concerned citizens take to the streets and raise their voices in favor of solidarity and a liberal stance towards migration on the one hand, or call for greater deterrents and coercive policies on the other. The chapter discusses a range of theoretical approaches to the contentious issue of protest in the field of asylum and deportation. Embedded in concepts of political change, limited state sovereignty, and migration control, it discusses the strength of comparative perspectives across time and national contexts for achieving in-depth insights into the dynamics, actors, forms, and effects of protest activities. In addition, the chapter provides an overview on the contributions to the volume, which include longitudinal studies and case studies on pro- and anti-migrant protest activities in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Islam and Muslims in Austria

Austria is characterized as inclusive in terms of the governance of religion and thus often described as a best-practice model for the incorporation of religious minorities, particularly Muslims. This assessment is based on the principle of equal treatment of all legally acknowledged religious communities and the rights and resources they are entitled to. The legal recognition of Islam in Austria roots in a law of 1912, which Muslim immigrants who came to Austria following the guest worker recruitment of the 1960s and 1970s referred to when they founded an Islamic Community. Since 1979, the Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IGGiO, ‘Islamische Glaubensgemeinschaft in Osterreich’) has been serving as the official representative body of Muslims in Austria.

The politics of categorization – political representatives with immigrant background between “the other” and “standing for”

ABSTRACT How is the category immigrant background (IB) politically made? Which meanings do political actors ascribe to the term IB and to which extent do these meanings include both connotations of ethnic, religious and cultural otherness and migration-related social and economic experiences? This paper deals with the politics of categorization within the field of political representation of ethnic minorities. It empirically examines the making of the IB category in public discourse about candidates for the 2013 Austrian general elections. Our analytical framework takes its cue from Rogers Brubaker’s category pair, analysis and practice, as well as Dvora Yanow’s account of categorization. The findings indicate that the politics of categorization along IB is characterized by a boundary contraction of origin and a gender-specific boundary expansion of the IB category to include religion. Regarding the discursive filling IB is used to stigmatize candidates as “the others”, but also refers to migration-related experiences, thereby “taming” othering. Still, the IB category rather appears as a burden than as a benefit ascribing cultural difference and signaling “they are not from here”.

The Effects of Institutional Change on Austrian Integration Policy and the Contexts that Matter

In the literature on public administration and policymaking, institutions are considered important as they shape collective regulation and public policies (March & Olsen, 1993; Peters, 2012). While a growing body of literature is available on the reasons and forms of institutional change (Koning, 2015; Mahoney & Thelen, 2010; Rocco & Thurston, 2014; Streek & Thelen, 2005; see also Bakir & Jarvis in this volume), less research has been done on the influence of institutional change on policy change. We have little knowledge of whether and how institutional reform can instigate changes in policymaking and the policy outputs produced. The literature on institutionalism generally focuses on established areas (economy, finance, foreign affairs, social affairs, etc.) and neglects emerging policy areas, especially emerging policy areas of low status within the architecture of government and public administration. This chapter contributes to filling this gap and focuses on the potential and impact of institutional reform on public policy in an area of steadily growing relevance, that of immigrant integration. It utilizes the introduction of an executive actor in the Austrian government, the State Secretary for Integration (SSI), as a case study to respond to two research questions: What forms of public policy change are stimulated by a new executive actor in the novel policy area of migrant integration? How can these policy changes (or the lack thereof) be explained by the contexts and facilitating conditions in which the new executive actor is embedded?

Claiming control: cooperation with return as a condition for social benefits in Austria and the Netherlands

Theoretically embedded in the migration/social policy nexus, this paper investigates cooperation with return (CWR) as a policy tool to remove practical deportation barriers for third-country nationals pending removal. Based on legal and policy documents and expert interviews with stakeholders in Austria and the Netherlands, the paper asks how CWR is implemented and what influence it has, both on migration control aims and on access to social rights. We argue that the politicization of the issue and diverging interests between policy networks of welfare and migration affect the regulation and implementation of the tool. By comparing the use of CWR within two country contexts, the analysis presented here adds valuable insights on features of governmental instruments in response to the “deportation gap”. The paper further adds to the literature on sanction-oriented, personalized migration policies.

Restoring Routine by Debating Tolerance? Discursive Responses to Jihadist Terrorist Attacks

ABSTRACT Terrorism provokes not only policy responses in terms of security but also public narratives aimed at restoring routine in shattered societies. This paper investigates the relevance and meanings of ‘tolerance’ in the discursive response to jihadist terrorist attacks. We ask how ‘tolerance’ as a value of liberal societies and a key concept of religious pluralism functions as a tool to facilitate this process of reassurance in the immediate aftermath of religiously motivated violence. We examine this question in a comparative case study of the discursive responses in Austria to the jihadist terrorist attacks in Paris in January and November 2015 based on the empirical analysis of media articles, press releases and speeches by political and civil society actors. We find that very different meanings are attributed to ‘tolerance’, from a praise of pluralism and freedom of rights to the justification of restrictive and exclusionary policies. We argue that this variety of usage is rooted in broader contextual developments, such as increased migration and politicization thereof, and reveal the ambivalent effects of ‘tolerance’ as a concept to restore routine in liberal democratic societies. Thus, this empirically oriented paper contributes to the mostly theoretical debate on presupposed common values, including tolerance, in liberal democracies.

Challenging the boundaries of democratic inclusion? Young people's attitudes about the distribution of voting rights

In theoretical debates about the quality of democratic rule, the core question concerns membership, and the adequate constitution of the demos: who is entitled to participate in choosing political representatives? This article enhances the predominantly normative debates on democratic inclusion and boundary making by taking an empirical perspective and analysing attitudes of 16–18-year-old teenagers regarding preconditions for the distribution of voting rights. Based on data stemming from 13 focus groups conducted in three Austrian cities in spring 2010, our findings show that principles related to both competence (autonomy, knowledge) and community (showing concern, being subjected to the law) matter when it comes to democratic boundary making. Furthermore, the study reveals that, in trying to explain the formation of juvenile attitudes about boundary issues, institutions are relevant when related to the conjunctive experiences manifested in the group-specific habitus: while young immigrants argue more inclusionarily than natives in terms of community-related preconditions, especially as far as the roles of language and citizenship are concerned, students argue more exclusionarily than apprentices when it comes to competence-related preconditions, especially civic education. Boundary making affects social groups independent of national origin or citizenship and can therefore be considered a permanent process beyond international migration.