Austria
The value of formal host-country education for the labour market position of refugees: Evidence from Austria
Refugees hosted in countries with advanced economies often work in low quality jobs, regardless of the education they obtained in their home countries. In this paper, I analyse the long-term impact of formal host-country education for refugees on labour market outcomes, using 22 years of microcensus data on Bosnians arriving in Austria during the 1992–1995 Bosnian war. I estimate local…
2023
Trajectories of Employment Gaps of Refugees and Other Migrants: Evidence from Austria
This paper analyzes the labor market integration of non-European refugees originating from middle- and low-income countries for the period of 2009–2018 in Austria. We assess their probability of being employed relative to Austrian natives and compare it with that of other non-European migrants and European refugees and other immigrants from low- and middle-income non-EU countries. We draw on a register-based…
2022
The role of institutional opportunity structures for refugee integration in Vienna. Learnings and modifications in the aftermath of the long summer of migration in 2015
Austria's exclusive model of citizenship, and restrictive policies on migration, refugee reception and asylum, dating back to the 1990s, create structural barriers to refugee integration in the country’s economic and socio-cultural life. In this article, we shed light on Vienna, a city renowned for its comprehensive social policies. However, the inclusive integration approach adopted by the city clashes with the…
2022
Migrant and Refugee Students from the Global South at Austrian Universities: A Typology for Targeted Support
Drawing on qualitative data from five focus group discussions (N=23), we developed a typology with migrant and refugee students from the Global South living in Vienna and studying at an Austrian university. Our findings indicate that different levels of support are required, depending on both structural and personal factors that respondents displayed. Structural factors include residence permit, field and level…
2022
Justice, What a Dream!—Mapping Intersections of Sustainability and Inclusion
This paper takes on the important concepts of inclusion and sustainability, in both their broad and discursive understandings, to map out the interrelations that teachers, who work within different areas of the Austrian school system, make between different, key aspects of their work and organization. The complex intersections of school organization, sustainability, and inclusion were analyzed following a situational analysis…
2022
Educational Transitions in War and Refugee Contexts: Youth Biographies in Afghanistan and Austria
This article addresses educational transitions under conditions of multiple insecurities. By analyzing empirical data of two research projects with youths in Afghanistan and refugee students in Austria, we show how young people make sense of the social and educational inequalities they encounter on their educational pathways within different national, socio‐political, and institutional contexts. We present in‐depth analyses of two cases…
2022
‘First and foremost, we are teachers, not refugees’: Requalification measures for internationally trained teachers affected by forced migration
This article looks deeper into the educational careers and barriers faced by internationally trained teachers with refugee backgrounds. Highly skilled teachers experience among others formal barriers due to the two-subject regime in Austria. This study analyses the barriers and measures that disable or enable the re-qualification of internationally trained teachers who wish to continue their profession in Austria. Guided by…
2022
The integration of asylum seekers and refugees in the field of education and the labour market: Comparative thematic report
This report is based on a meta-analysis of nine national reports on integration from countries along the so-called Eastern Mediterranean Route. It includes two countries beyond the EU, Turkey and Iraq, which have played an important role as source and transit countries of refugees, the transit countries of Greece, Italy and Poland, and the destination countries of Austria, Germany, Sweden,…
2021
Instating settings of emergency education in Vienna: temporary schooling of pupils with forced migration backgrounds
In the year 2015, Austria was one of the main European destinations of displaced persons. According to education authoritiesaround 15,000 children with a forced migration background of school age who arrived in Austria over the course of a few months from late2015 to the beginning of 2016 called for immediate and partly temporary solutions. Due to Austrian legislation and unlike…
2021
The Role of Vocational Education and Training in the Integration of Refugees in Austria, Denmark and Germany
Context: Vocational education and training (VET) plays a crucial role in the social inclusion of refugees. The aim of this paper is to examine how the VET systems of Austria, Denmark and Germany responded to the arrival of young refugees since 2015. VET in these countries is categorised as system of collective skill formation, which offers apprenticeships in addition to…
2021
An overview of refugee education in Europe
The overview of refugee children education in Europe we provide in this book is part of the Erasmus + project “ITIRE: Improving teaching to improve refugee children education”. Following the unprecedented flow of forced migrants to Europe in 2015, several countries have adopted measures to facilitate the enrolment of refugee children in the educational system. These actions have produced a…
2020
Türkiye
Denmark
Cyprus
Malta
Iceland
Albania
Norway
Belgium
Luxembourg
Intervention
Romania
Monaco
Switzerland
Bosnia
Czechia
Human rights
Croatia
Germany
Estonia
Sweden
Finland
Italy
Macedonia
Austria
Poland
Slovenia
Portugal
United Kingdom
Serbia
Slovakia
Caregivers
Netherlands
Lithuania
English
Ireland
Hungary
France
Greece
Bulgaria
Access & participation
Spain
Latvia
Attitudes towards inclusion of refugee girls with and without disabilities in Austrian primary schools
This study addressed the concept of ‘intersectionality’ relating to refugee status and disability. It examined whether differences in attitudes depending on disability type (physical disability vs. behavioural disorders) are present and how the refugee status and disability in girls interact to influence attitudes. The attitudes of 1377 participants towards the inclusion of Austrian girls with disabilities as well as of…
2020
Integration Policies,Trends, Problems and Challenges: An Integrated Report of 9 Country Cases
This report provides a snapshot for some of the primary findings, trends and challenges with regard to immigrant integration that have been studied in nine country cases, based on research conducted within the framework of the Horizon2020 RESPOND project. These countries are Sweden, Germany, Italy, Greece, Austria, Poland, the UK, Turkey and Iraq. All nine country reports study integration in…
2020
Navigating troubled waters: Unaccompanied minors views on education and language learning in Austria
This thesis analyses how young refugees experience learning and living in Austria. It examines their motivation for learning and how their motivation may be influenced by the difficulties they face (e.g.: PTSD, anxiety, very low levels of literacy, language barriers, having never attended a school before or having not attended one in a long time, refugee accommodation, and limited access…
2020
Higher education and solidarity? The integration of refugee students at austrian universities
The refugee streams of 2015 had a tremendous impact on European societies. In context of the influx of refugees, civil society showed large solidarity. Universities did so as well, organizing programs to accommodate asylum seekers and refugees on campus. As solidarity is necessary for social relationships and coordinating life chances in a just way, the effectiveness of such programs can…
2020
Widening access to refugees: Responses of Austrian public universities
Europe has been a scene of mass migration unparalleled in scale since the World War II in the last couple of years. With the recent migration flow, higher education institutions have confronted with the new challenge of managing a diverse student body from refugees and asylum seekers. Likewise, refugee and asylum seeking students have encountered various barriers in accessing higher…
2017
Adult education in Europe 2017: a civil society view
The following report is based on a survey sent to EAEA’s members, asking them about the state of adult education in their country. The views expressed come from a variety of contexts. EAEA members are often umbrella organisations representing their country’s adult education providers, and can have the status of a non-governmental organisation representing providers to the national or regional…
2017
Türkiye
Romania
Equity & equality
Belarus
Non-formal education
Bosnia
Lifelong learning
Croatia
Germany
Estonia
Case study
Finland
Sweden
Liechtenstein
Austria
Macedonia
Serbia
Poland
Surveys & questionnaire
Portugal
Netherlands
Russia
United Kingdom
Ireland
Slovakia
Teachers & educational staff
Greece
Vocational & technical education
English
Spain
Adult education & training
Policy & law
Denmark
Access & participation
Iceland
Refugee students’ perspectives on inclusive and exclusive school experiences in Austria
This paper examines refugee students' experiences in the Austrian mainstream school system. It highlights four areas: school connectedness, social exclusion, support systems and friendships. In the study, 55 refugee students between 8 and 21 years old enrolled in primary and secondary education participated in a semi-structured interview. Data were analysed with directed qualitative content analysis, whereby codes were created deductively…
2020
An investigation of the difficulties faced by Syrian asylum seekers and Syrian refugees in acquiring a second language and the possible solutions from refugees’ perspective
The current dissertation sheds light on the difficulties that Syrian refugees and asylum seekers face in acquiring the languages of the countries they had to flee to. To do so, this qualitative research investigated the experience of 45 Syrian refugees and asylum seekers who were hosted by 9 different countries around the world (Germany, Turkey, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Malay,…
2018
Hospitable universities and integration of refugees: First responses from Austria and Poland
European universities responded in different ways to the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015. Some subscribed to the agenda of higher education (HE) as a universal human right, while others stressed different long-term benefits of offering access to it. Yet, the unprecedented sense of moral urgency that guided immediate declarations of support and subsequent actions has largely remained unaddressed. With the crisis…
2018
On the brink of education: Experiences of refugees beyond the age of compulsory education in Austria
This paper offers first-hand accounts of refugees beyond the age of compulsory education having arrived in Austria during the last five years. Their accounts were collected using qualitative interviews and a visual method to allow for different approaches towards their educational biographies. Nine individual and two group interviews (altogether with 16 young people) were conducted, where the majority of the…
2018
‘Living with and Learning from Refugees’: Schools in vienna dealing with global challenges
Public schools represent places in which overall societal exchange occurs and plays out. Austria looks back on more than 30 years' experience of including different religions beyond Christianity in the public educational system. Democratic countries are well advised to embed religious education into the educational system at large. Doing so, it is easier to implement a rational and deliberating agenda…
2018
Integration of refugees in Austrian universities
The flow of migration recently in Europe with high numbers of asylum-seekers influenced not only the demographic scale of the European countries, but also the governmental instrumentality through which the crisis can be tackled. In regards to higher education sector, the social dimension of higher educational institutions has consequential responsibility in response to the refugee crisis in Europe. In this…
2017
School-based interventions supporting refugees and asylum seeking children in mainstream schools: A systematic literature review
More than 14.000 children who are refugees or asylum seeking are attending compulsory schools in Austria. The refugee crisis is a current topic, which is influencing the everyday school-life in many Austrian schools. Not all schools are prepared for this challenge. In order to point out possibilities for improving the refugee situation in Austrian schools, the aim of this study…
2017
Education with and within borders – challenges of refugees beyond the age of obligatory schooling by using the examples of heterogenuous school and transitions related to education [Bildung mit und innerhalb von grenzen – herausforderungen für Flüchtlinge jenseits des pflichtschulalters am beispiel heterogener schule und bildungsbezogener Übergänge]
Enabling access of refugees to education institutions causes challenges for those countries in Europe, which have accepted large numbers of refugees in 2015. Services are being saturated because of high numbers of refugees, questions regarding living and service provision (as such) become more and more pressuring. Financial means are limited. The Austrian school system has succeeded in providing for those…
2016
Integration of refugees in Germany and Austria: German and acculturation [Integration von flüchtlingen in deutschland und österreich: Deutsch und akkulturation]
German for Foreigners (Deutsch als Fremdsprache) is an established field of German Studies which focuses on the methodology and didactics of teaching a language and a culture of communication. Should we want to refer to German used as the language of communication among immigrants living within a German-speaking environment, we need to talk about German as a Second Language (Deutsch…
2016