The Migration Policy of Austria: From Regulative Measures to Integration

The article is devoted to the problems and history of the Austrian migration policy and its evolution in the period from 1945 to 2015. In the article, the author is concerned with the migration projects of the Austrian government throughout different periods in the country's history. The author emphasizes two key directions of migration policy - regulative measures between 1945 and 1995, which were directed to the regulated decrease of the country's migration levels, and the period of intensive integration from 1995 until 2015. During the first period, the Austrian government was in need of cheap labor force from abroad. The need was determined by the lack of local labor force of different qualification levels and the fast economic growth of the country after the Second World War. At the beginning of the 1960s, the treaties with Spain, Italy, Turkey and Yugoslavia were signed, which helped Austria fill its labor market with cheap and accessible workers despite the fact that the first agreements with Spain and Italy did not succeed. Although the labor force agreements had brought remarkable benefits to the economy, in the 1970s the Gastarbeiter-policy began to change the situation in the labor market in a negative way. The number of migrants grew too fast and this number was bigger than initially expected in the early 1960s. The 1973 oil crisis and high unemployment rates of migrants forced the Austrian government to introduce new regulative measures and laws, which aimed to reduce the number of migrants in the country and attractmore people with high education and qualification levels into the country. The author of the article emphasizes that by the end of the 1980s the number of migrants was partly reduced, but at the beginning of the 1990s Austria faced three very important challenges. After the end of the Cold War, a lot of people from Central and Eastern Europe flew into Austria to find a new home and work places. Moreover, the war in Yugoslavia also started massive migration processes in Europe, which were nearly connected with the Austrian territory because of the fact that Austria is crossed by many migration routes. In this period, Austria also prepared to enter the European Union. It was the time of total change in Austrian migration policy. Today Austria faces one of its biggest migration challenges in the history of this country which emerged after the migration crisis in Europe had started. The author describes the measures taken to prevent and to cope with the migrant flows and researches the perspectives and plans of the migration policy of Austria related to the further decades. The author concludes that although the crisis was a huge challenge for the migrant policy institutions of Austria, the reaction of the Austrian government was an adequate establishment of new forms of migration regulations which led to the reduction of immigrant flows but did not bring the expected result.

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