Publications   Migration and Integration  E. Koch, V. Ratković,M. Saringer,R.Schöffmann

“Foreign workers” in Carinthia – labour immigration in the media and personal memoirs.

Immigration is a frequently discussed subject both in the media and in political dialogues today. Alongside it discussion about the »foreign workers« phenomenon is extremely important – as this constitutes the first extensive far-reaching attempt to regulate immigration flow. At the same time today the image of the male »foreign worker«, who in the sixties and seventies had left his home country behind him in order to feed his family from afar, is still firmly grounded in Austria’s cultural memory. The fact that there were female »foreign workers« as well though – even in Carinthia – seems conversely to have mostly been forgotten. Rather the image that predominates today is that immigrants were mainly wives and mothers who had to suffer as helpless victims of the immigration process. In this publication this image is critically challenged and the »foreign workers« are autonomous agents forced into the middle ground. The female »foreign workers«, just like their male colleagues, also came to Austria and other places as they took it upon themselves to support their families. By means of interviews with female witnesses at the time and analyses from Carinthian media from the sixties and seventies, the living and working conditions of these women in particular have been documented and their significance for the state of Carinthia has been established. 

Elisabeth Koch, Viktorija Ratkovic, Manuela Saringer, Rosemarie Schöffmann: "Foreign workers in Carinthia"- labour immigration in the media and personal memoirs. Drava Verlag Klagenfurt 2013 € 14,80.