Keywords

Introduction

This chapter explores the so-called discovery of immigration (Berlinghoff 2013) during the 1970s—“after the boom”—and the emergence of socio-scientific research on so-called guest workers, focusing especially on the role of remittances in this context. The aim is to apply the perspectives of transnationalism and postcolonialism to early migration and remittance research in Austria.

The early 1970s were a phase of profound changes in several social spheres in Austria, including migration and diversity. After recruitment agreements were signed with Turkey (1964) and Yugoslavia (1966), between 10,000 and 20,000 people came to Austria per year; at the beginning of the 1970s, the number rose to between 25,000 and 40,000. At its peak in 1973, about a quarter of a million people from abroad worked in the country, constituting 10 percent of employees nationwide (Biffl 1986, p. 40). Approximately 80 percent of these were from Yugoslavia and about 12 percent from Turkey. The demand was caused by a rapidly growing economy, which was no longer able to cover its demand for labor domestically. The unions, which tended to reject the opening of the Austrian job market, though unable to completely ignore the demands of the economy, arranged that in the admission of contingents of foreign workers a very restrictive regime for “guest work,” including preferential treatment of nationals and a principle of rotation, was introduced (Matuschek 1985, pp. 159–198; Wollner 2007, pp. 213–225). Domestic workers were thus given preference over foreign workers in the labor market, while the “guest workers” regularly had to return home and be replaced.

When Austria Discovered Immigration

Corresponding to the changing labor market and its policies in the late 1960s and early 1970s, public debates about the employment of foreigners and its social consequences increased and took on a negative tone. In March 1974, the oil crisis and the deceleration of economic growth were used as an argument to reduce tourist employment and block guest worker employment to the level of October 1973. This paralleled the recruitment stop in the Federal Republic of Germany, which had already been enacted in November 1973. While in Austria, a quarter of the foreign work force had their residence and work permits withdrawn, residence and chain migration nevertheless frequently continued, with family reunification increasing as an unintended side effect. During this peak and the subsequent reduction of immigration, an intense social-scientific research activity emerged that focused on the societal consequences of foreign workers’ employment. The vast majority of the published articles focused on the costs and benefits of labor migration as well as on integration processes. With regard to the Federal Republic, Czarina Wilpert at an early stage labeled the second half of the 1970s—after a first phase of recruitment until 1973—as a phase of debates on infrastructure and research oriented toward social problems (Wilpert 1984, p. 306). This era can also be viewed as the “discovery of immigration” (Berlinghoff 2013).

The social partners (the Economic Chamber, the Workers’ Chamber, the Federation of Austrian Industries, and the Trade Union Federation), the essential agents in the field of foreign workers’ employment in Austria, founded the “Task Force for Economic and Sociological Studies” in 1971 in order to “cultivate timely and substantiated knowledge on the essential difficulties emerging in foreign workers’ employment and to propose appropriate actions” (Arbeitskreis 1973, p. 8).Footnote 1 Initially, four studies were conducted, focusing on the attitude of Austrians toward the guest workers, on the experiences and opinions of Austrians in residential areas with a large proportion of guest workers, on the problems and experiences of Austrian industrial enterprises with guest workers, and on the process of integration of guest workers in Austria. The main results were published in one volume in 1973.

It is striking that the publication stated right at the beginning that not only the short- and long-term aims of the recruitment countries, but also of the foreign work force themselves and the sending countries would be considered. There were also frequent references to the fundamental meaning of human rights in this context. The set of aims included the following: along with economic questions (“balance of supply and demand on the job market” and “increase of business efficiency”), we find not only the social interests of the Austrian population (“securing advantages for Austrians, for example, through relative social advancement, new supervisory roles, as well as the prevention of disadvantages, for example through competition”) and the “prevention of social tensions as one of the biggest threats and a potential matter of expense of the use of guest workers,” but also the “integration of guest workers into the Austrian population” as well as ultimately the “betterment of guest workers as an immediate humanitarian aim”—not to mention their economic integration as consumers and the improvement of international relations with the countries of origin (Arbeitskreis 1973, pp. 8–9).

Integration was here seen as the “effect of a long-lasting process of assimilation,” which was seen to “develop to varying degrees”: “The largest degree of integration is complete absorption into the nationality of the host country.” At this point, it was also acknowledged that integration occurs not only in one direction: “Through contact with the incomers, the people of the host country also experience an assimilation towards them, albeit to a lesser degree.” Only for a very small part of the “guest workers,” however, was a full-scale integration deemed desirable. The task force’s inquiry showed that merely 5 percent of Austrians favored a “permanent inclusion of guest workers into the domestic population,” whereas 90 percent strongly rejected this. Even the City of Vienna only saw an approval rate of 10 percent, although “a large-scale historic process of integration still remains present in local memory” (Arbeitskreis 1973, p. 93).

Though in a vague and covert way, the latter is most likely a reference to the large migration movements that occurred in the late phase of the Habsburg Monarchy. At the time, hundreds of thousands of people from the Bohemian lands, the Hungarian part of the monarchy, the Austrian hereditary lands, Galicia, the Bukovina, and Dalmatia came to the capital and residential city of Vienna. This indeed became a central historical point of reference for labor migration in the Second Republic, including the proverbial reference to Slavic names in the Viennese telephone book—which also stood for successful integration and normalization after a few generations (see also Hofstetter 1973, p. 59). This is represented in the iconic Kolaric poster campaign in the Viennese dialect: “I haaß Kolaric, du haaßt Kolaric, warum sogns’ zu dir Tschusch?” (My name is Kolaric, your name is Kolaric, why do they call you Tschusch? “Tschusch” is a pejorative term for foreigners, especially people of Southeastern European origin.) The poster was designed in 1973 by the Lintas agency on behalf of the Aktion Mitmensch of the Austrian advertising industry (see also Fischer 2008, pp. 327–353; Hemetek 2000) (see Fig. 2.1).

Fig. 2.1
A poster features a tall man and a little boy standing and looking at each other. The text below is a question in a foreign language.

The Kolaric poster campaign, 1973. Reproduced with kind permission of the Initiative Minderheiten Austria

Full size image

With its—from today’s perspective—rather problematic imagery, this campaign can be read as a plea for humanity and equality at the height of the employment of “guest workers” and the increasingly controversial discourse that accompanied it. In fact, it emerged as a trivial effort of improving the image of advertisement generally; the content was thus actually interchangeable, but the choice of subject here was simultaneously quite significant. Meanwhile, in Germany there was a dominance of references to the history of colonialism and slavery—partly by circumvention, partly by explicit inclusion of the recent Nazi past (see also Geiselberger 1972, pp. 9–13; Klee 1971; Meinhof 1995, pp. 97–107).

The study assessed prejudices toward foreign workers from Turkey and Yugoslavia as harmless. It is significant, however, that these workers were regarded as “primitive, dirty, clumsy and unreliable as well as overall culturally strange” (Arbeitskreis 1973, p. 81). There was here already some sense of the threat that with the increasing integration of “guest workers” and especially their social advancement, prejudices would also increase (Hahn and Stöger 2014, pp. 32–33). For that reason, a “general atmosphere of tolerance, humanity and a continuing emphasis on the advantages of the use of guest workers” was called for in order to avoid an escalation of social tensions. In this context, a crucial role was attributed particularly to the mass media, cultural institutions, the education system, and “the big organizations.” Following the right-wing populist “Schwarzenbach-Initiative” against “Überfremdung” (hyperxenesis) in Switzerland in 1970, a “systematic agitation against foreigners” was (at that time) seen as unlikely in Austria (Arbeitskreis 1973, p. 88). At the same time, the study held that there was a “threshhold of hyperxenesis,” which in small towns lay at 20 percent and in larger towns at 30 percent, respectively (Arbeitskreis 1973, pp. 89–92). However, it was also stated that there were no absolute critical limits: “Tensions do not simply arise from the existence of guest workers, they must have causes—either actual conflicts of interest or factitious prejudices. Such causes may already take effect in residential areas with a relatively low density, presumably in areas with a number of guest workers of about ten per cent” (Arbeitskreis 1973, p. 92).

A proportion of 10 percent of foreign employees was seen as the crucial threshold “at which social problems apparently arise”: “In the long run, the economic benefits of foreign workers’ employment for the host country decline, while simultaneously political and social considerations gain in importance” (Butschek and Walterskirchen 1974, pp. 214, 224). The “Schwarzenbach-Initiative” in Switzerland also aimed at curtailing the proportion of foreign workers at 10 percent. In general, however, the necessity and benefit of foreign workers were not called into question (see also Hofstetter 1973).

Costs and benefits were henceforth repeatedly weighed up against each other, which resulted in the issue of foreign workers moving from the economic sphere to domestic and social politics. In this context, the question was raised whether it even still made sense to maintain businesses with a proportion of foreign workers exceeding 80 percent: “Would it not be more reasonable to move such enterprises to foreign countries?” (Hofstetter 1973, p. 59). In light of the neoliberally motivated relocation of production to newly industrialized countries that has genuinely occurred in recent decades, this was a remarkable proposal by an Austrian union official. This was, after all, the time when the demand for “integration before new immigration” came up, which was upheld throughout the 1990s and into the present day: “Still, the number of foreign workers cannot and must not go sky high. Obviously, the development of our infrastructure has not kept pace with the expansion of the population through foreigners. Thus, our next aim must be to provide the appropriate conditions for the number of foreigners that we already employ” (Hofstetter 1973, p. 59).

The studies went on to outline three problem scenarios that were to be prevented in the future: the “ghetto problem” (the formation of a segregated subgroup), the “pogrom problem” (the development of aggressive tendencies toward foreigners and the radicalization of the majority population), and the “proletarianization problem” (the modification of culture and society due to the successful assimilation of the foreign workers, but also their “confinement to lower social classes”) (Gehmacher 1972, p. 14). These problems were also identified and formulated in the study “Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Einsatzes ausländischer Arbeitskräfte” (Opportunities and Limitations in the Use of Foreign Workers) of the Beirat für Wirtschafts- und Sozialfragen (Advisory Board for Economic and Social Questions), a kind of early think tank of the Austrian social partners. To avoid crisis scenarios, two preemptive strategies were proposed to reduce social tensions, namely either the integration of the foreign workforce on several social levels or their rotation through flexible governance (Beirat 1976, p. 38).

Remittances in Social Science Research of the 1970s

It was clear to the recruiting countries from the very beginning that hiring “guest workers” would stabilize prices domestically and exert a counter-inflationary effect because of low consumption on behalf of the labor migrants and their payment of remittances, while the production and amount of goods would increase. Remittances were not seen by economic researchers as a serious threat to the balance of payments, while one of the greatest prejudices relating to guest workers was that the export of currency was dangerous (Österreichisches Komitee für Sozialarbeit 1972, p. 83; Zur Beschäftigung 1962). Remittances were also widely seen as a benefit for the sending countries. In the lists of advantages and disadvantages for the receiving and sending countries, the advantages included a reduction in unemployment and thus of the burden of state benefits as well as of domestic political tensions alongside the conveyance of a modern approach to continuous and well-organized labor. The disadvantages cited on the other hand included the depopulation of regions and villages, the temporary loss of good labor forces, the permanent loss of labor forces generally, and “thus a long-term deterioration of genetic potential,” as well as a danger of mass remigration, since remigrants exacerbated the oversupply of small-scale businesses (Arbeitskreis 1973, p. 128).

At the same time, remittances were seen as advantageous to the receiving countries in the long run, because they would eventually increase the external demand for consumer goods and thereby increase exports of goods and services (Beirat 1976, p. 32). This fact in particular was seen as a kind of neocolonial aspect of the labor migration arrangement of the 1950s to the 1970s: the sending countries would only experience an ostensible improvement in their trade balance through the remittances of the emigrants, while at the same time these payments would have an inflationary impact, as they would lead to more consumption than production. While the receiving countries tried to present remittances as a form of development aid, they would in fact primarily benefit the demand for capital goods—once the “guest workers” had become accustomed to cars and electronic appliances—thus also once more benefitting the receiving countries, while the trade deficit of the sending countries increased (Geiselberger 1972, pp. 18–20, pp. 167–171; see also Klee 1971, p. 25).

Above all, remittances were understood as an important indicator of emigrants’ ties to their countries of origin (Mehrländer 1974, pp. 231–239) and their willingness to return (Lichtenberger 1984, p. 173). As the Advisory Board for Economic and Social Questions noted: “The primary motive for accepting work abroad is the higher wage, which is mostly connected to very specific saving targets.” A distinction was here made between “saving targets for the homeland” (which included the means to build homes, buy property, establish businesses, repay debts, and provide for relatives), “saving targets that can be realized both in Austria and in the homeland” (which included cars and other long-term consumer goods, clothes, and education for one’s children), and “saving targets for Austria” (which included accommodation and furniture). These “saving targets for Austria” offered to contemporary researchers “a good indication of the willingness to integrate and the level of integration already achieved” (Beirat 1976, p. 50). These distinctions were viewed as a direct reflection of the level of integration: “Of the Turkish workers in Vienna, for example, forty per cent accepted work abroad to pay off their debts while 31 per cent aimed to make themselves independent with the income they could save thereby, with a further 15 per cent having at least considered the latter option. A survey of the saving targets of foreign workers in the Federal Republic of Germany revealed that 60 per cent of saving targets were clearly geared toward the homeland, while the remaining indications could not be clearly attributed as pointing toward either the homeland or the host country” (Beirat 1976, p. 50).

The saving practices of the “guest workers” were thus used to legitimize the rotation principle, while an understanding was also explicitly expressed for the fact that changes in the workers’ individual goals were dependent on the conditions reigning in the recruiting country: “In sum, the available research findings lead to the conclusion that the primary goals of the bulk of the foreign workers predominantly favor rotation. The longer they remain, the more positive the attitude to integration emerging among a portion of the foreign workers, provided that—particularly if the conditions for integration are good—a successive change in subjective targets takes place” (Beirat 1976, p. 54).

Interestingly, social science research on domestic and foreign migration also emerged in Turkey, as one of the major sending countries, during the era of guest worker migration, especially following the establishment of a state planning office in 1960 and the introduction of university autonomy in 1961—thus even somewhat earlier than in most host countries. At this point in time, migration also became a focus of state planning and government policy in Turkey, relating alongside questions of population growth and unemployment especially to the migrants’ potential savings as an important source of income and as a motor of national economic development. Thus, it is not surprising that wages, salaries, savings, and remittances constituted by far the most studied topics in Turkish social science research between 1960 and 1984 (Abadan-Unat 1986, pp. 45–57, esp. 47–48, 50–51; Abadan-Unat 1976; Akgündüz 2016, pp. 53, 55–56, 67–68). In an inversion of the notion that guest worker recruitment constituted development aid to the sending countries, Turkish researchers assumed that it was above all unemployed workers who emigrated and that this emigration would thus not constitute a domestic workforce drain. The emigrants were mostly considered to be unskilled workers who would return with useful know-how for Turkish industry. This was already refuted empirically at an early stage. In any case, it demonstrates that the sending countries also subjected guest worker migration to cost/benefit considerations (İçduygu 2014, pp. 117–123).

Reclaiming Postcolonial and Transnational Perspectives

This contemporary interpretation of remittances as an indicator of migrants’ willingness to return or to stay and “integrate” demonstrates the need to place the financial and social transfers in a wider context. The continuing connection to their countries of origin (including the purchase of property and the construction of homes) could not yet be seen as part of a “transnational lifestyle” as it is regarded today. Moreover, the migrant actors themselves were not regarded as active agents, but as labor subjects, who had to be controlled and optimized. Their voices and perspectives remained silent in early “guest worker” research.

In the interpretative paradigm of postcolonialism, the denial of representation and an independent voice is a practice that seamlessly perpetuates colonial forms of rule and discourse—which is, of course, what the concept of postcoloniality focuses on: not simply the chronological “thereafter,” but the continuities and traditions of othering as phenomena that were not concluded with but rather continued to exert an influence beyond the rupture of decolonization. If, following Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988, pp. 271–313), one of the preeminent scholars of postcolonial theory, we ask the question “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” we can only answer with “yes.” The postcolonial twist in this communication is: of course, the subaltern can speak. But who listens to a voice that does not represent the cultural hegemony?

Colonialism Without Colonies

Recent research on labor migration in the second half of the twentieth century has repeatedly described and interpreted this as a post- or neocolonial phenomenon and/or as a specific form of internal colonization, equating labor migrants with the subaltern of postcolonial discourse.Footnote 2 In many European countries, this “colonialism without colonies” is in fact related directly to these countries’ colonial pasts—a claim that can even be applied to Austria when considering the internal colonization status of Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Habsburg Empire (Müller-Funk and Wagner 2005; Todorova 2009). Indeed, if we follow Jürgen Osterhammel’s (2006, pp. 19–26) definition of colonialism, we find that the following traits apply to the labor migration of the 1950s and 1960s: (a) hegemony over cultural foreignness and the construction of inferior otherness; (b) the belief in a mission and a duty of guardianship, albeit today in weaker form; (c) differentials and dependencies between centers and peripheries (particularly present in remittance transfers to places of origin); and presumably also (d) the utopia of the non-political that reduces everything to administrative acts while at the same time the locals (ironically) feel colonized by the immigrants. Seen like this, we are looking at a system of exploitation, with the colonized invariably existing only to serve the dominant culture in which they themselves remain marginalized. This is still reflected today in those popular political and economic arguments that praise migration as compensation for the demographic decline of the indigenous population and thereby try to make it more palatable to the fearful autochthonous population, which tends toward racist exclusion. Even if one is not entirely prepared to accept this comparison between colonial exploitation and labor migration, it is obvious that the denial of representation is a central problem in both and, due to the changes taking place in our society through migration, that a new take on national history is required.

Austria as a Migration Society

Migration processes have led to changes in Austrian society that necessitate a transnational history of Austria as a migration society. This signifies an important paradigm shift: society as a whole is currently being transformed to a significant degree by migration processes. This affects natives and immigrants alike, just as colonialism did not just affect and transform the colonies, but also the metropoles. This also complicates the notion of “integration,” which presupposes a linear process of assimilation as was proffered by the Chicago School as far back as the 1920s through the 1940s. Immigrants do not assimilate up to the point that they disappear completely within their host society, which itself remains unchanged. Rather, our society, culture, and everyday lives are transformed under the influence of migration. The conventional notion of immigrant societies therefore seems inappropriate these days, as it continues to delegate the issue to an ostensibly clearly defined group (“the immigrants”) who are not viewed as an integral part of society, but at best as an appendage (Broden and Mecheril 2007). Social science research should not contribute to this view and further ghettoize migrants by singling them out as research topics. Glick Schiller has addressed this approach as methodological nationalism and pointed toward its inherent dangers (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). What we should do instead is take into account the entire society in our research. Social “problems” or “issues” should not be passed down to the “immigrants,” as has long been the case in public discourse and continues to predominantly be the case today.

The Perpetuation of Racism in Migration Discourse

With specific regard to Austria, further special conditions prevailing in this migration society need to be taken into account: This is a post-Nazi, post-genocidal society. The concept of post-Nazism—like postcolonialism—points toward the continuities and traditions that exist beyond the ruptures, toward remains and traces, residues, and effects that by no means simply disappeared after the end of Nazi rule. It is not possible to talk about foreignness and constructions of the “other” in Austria or Germany without taking into account these countries’ catastrophic histories of racism, persecution, expulsion, and genocide. These histories also include colonial experiences of racism and violence, regardless of whether there was a direct path leading “from Windhoek to Auschwitz” (Jürgen Zimmerer) or not. This is evident in the introduction of terms such as “xenophobia” in the 1970s, since (structural) racism was after the Holocaust not perceived of as such or was systematically denied (Goldberg 1993; Terkessidis 1998). Conventional references to “prejudices” also reduce racism and antisemitism to individual faults while at the same time masking the fact that these are not exceptional phenomena, but rather dominant ideas of some members of society about their society, constituting a complex form of “racist knowledge” (Terkessidis 1997).

One can also not discuss “guest workers” and their remittance practices without taking into account the history of forced and foreign labor during World War Two. Beyond this history, which Austria and Germany have in common, Austria’s specific prehistory of interior migration within the Habsburg Empire naturally also needs to be considered, especially migration from Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Galicia into the metropolis Vienna. By 1840, 40 percent of the population living and working in the imperial residence were “foreign.” In this context, “colonial attitudes” toward the immigrants from the provinces became ubiquitous (Csáky 2010, pp. 222–230, pp. 345–356).

National Histories and Transnational Society

From today’s perspective, migration is a distinctly transnational phenomenon. The traditional framework of the nation state remains intact therein, not least of all because of the significance of the different national legal systems between states, yet this framework is repeatedly disrupted and circumvented (Waldinger 2015). Other levels—such as the local and the regional—become more prominent in this context: migration systems and migrant biographies and networks moreover connect spaces to Austrian history that were not classically a part of this history, especially the migrants’ places, regions, and countries of origin along with their respective histories, which enticed the migrants to emigrate in the first place, as well as the places to which, having been transformed themselves, they migrate onward or back (Römhild 2004). Migration not only opens up (more) complex spaces but, through manifold connections in memory, also (more) complex chronological interrelations. Transnationality therefore has to be regarded as a research perspective in which the nation remains significant as a frame of reference, but where the established logic of the national is repeatedly and fundamentally challenged and called into question. Transnational and national developments exist in a complex interrelationship, just as various transnational processes that are described for example as Europeanization or globalization exert an influence on each other, overlay each other, and compete with each other. The national framework is not simply dissolved, but it is very much influenced, overlaid, and intersected by transnational currants. The global and the local/regional get mixed up in the process—a process of hybridization or “glocalization” (Robertson 1998, pp. 192–220).

Migration, cross-border lifestyles, and multiple belongings expressed in remittance practices disrupt ideas of distinct belongings and homogenous identity constructions based on clear boundaries, of solid, untraversable borders, and of equally immutable, clearly delineated cultures. Remitting as a genuinely transnational phenomenon places the focus on the spaces both below and above the national, meaning the local/regional and international, respectively, while also complicating this classic gradation. At the same time, remittances reproduce a neocolonial gaze by projecting global inequalities onto social relations (see Meyer in this volume). They demonstrate that today’s society is no longer a national society (if it ever was that), but at the same time, they point toward the hierarchy between places and societies, for example by reinforcing the relation of center and periphery from the characteristics of postcolonialism outlined by Osterhammel.

If we want to begin analyzing remittances as transnational practices, we must start by deconstructing national history (Bojadžijev 2009, pp. 102–105). After all, it was national history that produced and legitimized exclusions to begin with. The establishment of historiography and the nation state were closely related to one another. It was not least of all through a history constructed as specific, separate, and primordial that nation states drew their ostensibly inviolable legitimacy throughout the entire nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century. The establishment and development of museums also played a central role in this respect. These served, like historiography, to generate a national past and a shared culture in the first place. This entailed not only the drawing of clear boundaries toward the outside, but also the production of a homogenous interior: populace, culture, and territory were constructed as a natural entity and no distinction was here made between nation and peoplehood. On the contrary, the idea of nation was always ethnically contaminated (Anderson 1983). This is why it remains difficult to this day to conceive of ethnic and cultural diversity as well as of various historical interrelationships within national contexts.

The process of inscribing migration into (national) history always entails the danger of essentializing and homogenizing the very phenomena that are supposed to be integrated. Problematic ascriptions and inappropriate definitudes are unfortunately necessary for linguistic understanding alone. In reality, however, neither migrants nor the autochthonous Austrian population are homogenous entities. Moreover, neither is defined exclusively by their origins. Instead, they can all be equally divided into various groups, networks, and individuals. However, identities are always ascribed in abridging territorial forms. It is especially important that the integration of migration and migrants into national history does not simply serve as a form of appropriation and to once again reinforce the myth of the nation, in the manner that dominant cultures are currently trying to exploit hybridity and heterogeneity as economic resources. The historical normalization of migration is similarly ambivalent, as it is currently serving the needs of globalization: of course, it is true that migration processes of various scopes constitute the rule rather than the exception in history. However, this realization should not lead to centuries of perpetual and effective practices of inequality, exploitation, and difference being concealed or even justified.

Who Tells the National History? Whose Voice Is Heard?

Postcolonial theory is especially suited in this context to hone our focus on ubiquitous forms of essentialization and exoticization, on exclusions and suppressions. Postcolonial theory also reminds us of the import of positionality, criticism, and self-reflection—and not least of all of one’s own position as a narrator (Ha 2009, pp. 43–60). Especially with topics relating to historical and contemporary exclusions and marginalizations as well as racist ascriptions, it is never irrelevant who is speaking. Integrating migration and migrants into national history cannot be a comfortable exoticism, but should instead engender a critical view toward the present and the future.

A scholarly engagement with migration societies therefore demands a break with the inherited and established methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). The transnational gaze expands the national sphere without dissolving it. Spaces need to be set in relation to one another and to be connected with one another beyond the logic of the nation. As this volume shows, such a perspective is needed because a history of migration and social change—precisely following postcoloniality—can never just be a history of elites, but must always give migrants a voice and a subject position of their own, while fathoming their agency within the prevailing societal power structures. This ultimately prevents the reduction of migrants to their economic significance, as happens so often in public discourse.

Provincializing Europe

A transnational history of Austria as a migration society necessarily entails a European perspective. The transnational labor migrations that began in the 1950s were initially an interior European migration, moving above all from the European countries around the Mediterranean to the industrialized states of Central, Western, and Northern Europe. The transfer of labor forces within the European Economic Community (EEC) was from the outset connected to questions of European integration, above all with free movement on the labor market, which would later render the recruitment halts largely ineffective with regard to other member states (this applied to Italy, as a founding member, from the very beginning, and furthermore from 1981 to Greece and from 1986 to Spain and Portugal). Immigration policies were already being coordinated within the EEC by the 1970s. Thus, national policies can no longer be understood outside of the supranational framework of the European Union. The former countries of origin have by today mostly turned into destination countries. In Austria, too, immigration from Africa and Asia is increasing, albeit slowly. Migration has become one of the key issues for Europe, as becomes obvious with regard to developments following Lampedusa and Ceuta. European discourses and policies regarding migration and its international entanglements shine a light not only on the process of European integration, but also on the attempt to construct a European identity. Unfortunately, this identity construction has also gone hand in hand with the exclusion of the “Other,” which is defined culturally as well as very practically and politically, and which the border regime FRONTEX is attempting to keep out of “Fortress Europe.” Here, the European dimension opens up into the global context, particularly as it relates to the past and present in Africa and Asia.

The topic of migration, which has hitherto remained marginalized in institutionalized contemporary history, allows for Austrian as well as European contemporary history more broadly to be reconceived and reconfigured, above all spatially and chronologically: spatially with regard to the global context, combining international relations and transnational entanglements, and chronologically with regard to incorporating the history and above all the aftermath of colonialism on equal footing alongside the history and aftermath of the Holocaust and World War Two. Such a reconceived history would not only open up new horizons and overcome historical rivalries, it would moreover offer manifold opportunities for collaboration within the field of history while simultaneously fostering an intense transdisciplinary network—not least of all with those disciplines that have to date dealt with the issue of migration, but also with other fields in the humanities, the social sciences, and cultural studies.

Migration is surely one of the most incisive elements in our understanding of European postwar history and the European present. It is also perhaps the greatest current challenge in European society. Few other events and processes have had a comparable effect on our societies. The Cold War was followed by an era that Samuel Huntington already before 9/11 described as the “Clash of Civilizations” (Huntington 1998). Turning away from his own position conveyed in his classic work “Orientalism,” Edward Said countered Huntington’s argument with the observation that cultures are constantly changing, exchanging with one another, and enriching each other—despite their simultaneous histories of conflict and violence (Said 2001; see also Said 1979). How great the subsequent shifts have been is evident for example in the fact that during the Cold War, with the Association Agreement concluded with the EEC in 1963/64 and the determination of its essential eligibility to join as a member state, Turkey could naturally be regarded as a part of Europe, whereas today this belonging is constantly being challenged through culturalistic arguments (Clemens 2007). Following Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (2008) classic work, we need to provincialize Europe and correct Eurocentrism on the global stage while not declaring Europe and its perspectives obsolete or losing them from sight.

Conclusion

In the early 1970s, the social sciences were deeply involved in the development of controversial discourses on foreigners and thereby also their remittance practices: they created and reaffirmed patterns of perception; they established connections and tried to offer solution strategies (see also Lanz 2007, pp. 86–96; Treibel 1988). Interestingly, the numerous Austrian studies from this time were hardly considered or investigated, neither as records for a history of science or a history of knowledge in the narrower sense nor as crucial testimonies of the development of the social and political engagements with migration and migrants. (That being said, they were taken into account in: Bergkirchner 2013, pp. 93–102; Gächter 2016, pp. 50–54; Matuschek 1985, pp. 182–184; Mayer 2009, pp. 136–138.) They did not even feature in a recent anthology focusing on the connection between research and politics in the field of migration, asylum, and integration (Karasz 2017).

The contribution of early social science to the controversial discourse on foreigners can also be tracked in their contributions regarding “guest workers’” remittances. Rather than investigating motives of supporting family and kin at home, the money transfers were viewed in their purely economic impacts. Research was thus limited to financial transfers, whereby remittances were not seen as a serious threat to the Austrian balance of payments, while the studies also highlighted the benefits for the economies of the receiving countries, namely Turkey and Yugoslavia. Above all, remittances were understood as an important indicator of emigrants’ ties to their country of origin and their willingness to return, thus legitimizing the rotation principle of the guest worker regime.

In actuality, remittances allow for cross-connections and interactions between politics, the economy, education, science, and religion can be taken into account as well as a transnational (and not only Western European) history can be told. The fact that numerous phenomena were already documented and interpreted by the social sciences at the time raises, of course, specific methodical challenges as to how this “social data” and the theories and explanatory models of the time can be historically investigated and classified (Doering-Manteuffel and Raphael 2012, pp. 30–31, 115–117). A historicization of early research on the so-called guest worker migration and its economic, social, and cultural consequences is necessary to deconstruct current discourses on migration and integration. It shows how deep colonial structures protrude into systems of knowledge production and academic economies (see also Bönisch-Brednich in this volume).

This is in line with an understanding of contemporary history as a history of problems and challenges in the present (Hockerts 1993, pp. 98–127). Thereby, questions are raised not only internal to scholarship, regarding for example traditions and models, methods and theories, and the transfer of concepts and ideas, but also regarding external scientific issues, such as the complex interaction between science, politics, and society, agents and institutions, European and international networks, as well as the role of expert knowledge in political decision-making and the public (see also Boswell 2011). The studies from the early 1970s not least of all offer insights into a future in the past: the then-assumed future of a migration society, even before this concept existed at a time when an understanding of migration-driven change of society gradually started to emerge. The same is important when studying remittances: money, object, ideas, and norms are not simply sent to the places of origin, but have transformative effects on actors and societies that transcend national borders. These effects determine the present, which is simultaneously a continuation of this history.