AN/SO 328 - The Culture of Immigration

As a destination for migrants, Austria is more attractive than ever before, receiving more migrants and asylum seekers than Germany or Switzerland, relative to its size. Austria is an immigration country, but politics and the public have realized this only partially. Migration is not a process to be understood only in economic and political terms but also as a socio-cultural process that is mediated by various others factors. This course, based on a conglomerate of various sources, should give a picture of Austria and its history of immigration. This includes an explanation of terms and typologies of migration, immigration, and emigration where theories and models that consider the origins, the effects, and the continuities of people moving to different spaces are introduced. Furthermore, the experiences as well as migrant communities and their networks in Vienna are introduced where special attention is given to the representation of immigrants in contemporary Austrian public discourses.