Foreigners in Austria and Austrians abroad – an attempt to reflect on the topic of the possibilities for foreigners in Austria and for Austrian students abroad.  By Katharina Leidinger

Well, Austria, a small country in the Middle of Europe; has often been a country to immigrate to in the past few years for refugees and for other Europeans who come from Eastern Europe. From my point of view, people who are living in the cities are quite aware of the situation and know what is going on because they are more often affected by it, but in the countryside information is quite rare about the reasons for immigrations and the backgrounds; That’s why I think it’s quite easy for political parties that don’t support the idea of immigration to receive an audience and to make them believe their ideas.

In Austria elections took place at the beginning of October. Of course all the political parties were supposed to convince as many people as possible to vote for them. Indeed there were some parties who used sayings like Austria should remain Austria and who acted in their information sheets and posters against foreign tradition. As a matter of fact an action was brought in but till now there are no results of the action available; I just wonder who foreigners must feel living in a country and reading all these posters every day everywhere in the streets.

 

During my time in Vienna I got to know many foreigners who were quite depressed about the situation here; because they had to experience that some parties are like trying to increase their amount of votes by fighting against foreigners. One result was in my opinion that the Austrian government introduced a really strict law relating to aliens;

Another fact is that it is not really common in Austria that information is supplied in more than one language, so it is often quite hard for them to get things arranged without asking some German speaking friends to come with them, well in the big cities they installed translators at public authorities, but also the majority of the Austrian population is not used to speak foreign languages, especially the older ones, that’s why it becomes even more difficult to get to know Austrians and I also think that German is a quite difficult language to learn because of its structure and all the different endings.

In Austria I often have the feeling that politics distinguishes between foreigners from other European countries and others and I often have the feeling that those are more accepted and that they perceive the group of the refugees as the most  unwanted ones; although these are the people who really need their support concerning treatment; accommodation etc.

But indeed I have the feeling that many of the institutions that are offered have too little employees and too little space and not enough possibilities for them how to spend the day.

As a student I had the chance to visit two other countries as well:

I stayed for one term in Helsinki/Finland to write my thesis at the Swedish School of Social Science and then I spent five weeks in Tamale/Ghana to do a study tour at the Tamale Institute of Cross cultural Studies.

Because of my term in Finland I also got to know many incoming students from all over Europe and I often had the feeling that many possibilities are offered to study abroad for one term or one year concerning accommodation; financial support and registration at universities as well. But if you want to stay there for the whole studies it becomes more and more expensive and I often wondered about this system and answers why it was established like that.

Well a person who is responsible for foreign affairs at an Austrian university told me that in her opinion they want to facilitate that students can experience living in a foreign country but many of the countries don’t want them to stay because of the situation of employment so that they make them not afford it;

As a matter of fact I couldn’t really find an answer till now for that question but I just think that everyone should have the possibility to live wherever he wants to and that it is also the duty of the state to offer the possibilities to do so concerning bilingual information etc.

I have the chance to do so at the moment in France and I am really happy about it;

Although it is quite close to Austria; I experienced that many things are really different and that made me feel somehow astonished during the first weeks of my stay.

Well; my name is Katharina Leidinger, I am a volunteer in the office of IYCS at the moment. Concerning me I am a former student of social work and was living in Vienna during my studies and originally I come from a small village in Austria. At the moment I am living in Paris, working there as a teacher for German in elementary schools.

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