This interdisciplinary volume offers methodologically innovative approaches to Austria聮s coping with issues of migration past and present. These essays show Austria聮s long history as a migration country. Austrians themselves have been on the move for the past 150 years to find new homes and build better lives. After World War II the economy improved and prosperity set in, so Austrians tended to stay at home. Austria聮s growing prosperity made the country attractive to potential immigrants. After the war, tens of thousands of 聯ethnic Germans聰 expelled from Eastern Europe settled in Austria. Starting in the 1950s 聯victims of the Cold War聰 (Hungarians, Czechs and Slovaks) began looking for political asylum in Austria. Since the 1960s Austria has been recruiting a growing number of 聯guest workers聰 from Turkey and Yugoslavia to make up for the labor missing in the industrial and service economies. Recently, refugees from the arc of crisis from Afghanistan to Syria to Somalia have braved perilous journeys to build new lives in a more peaceful and prosperous Europe.
G眉nter Bischof is the Marshall Plan Professor of History and the Director of Center Austria at the University of New Orleans.
Dirk Rupnow is a professor of contemporary history and head of the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck, and the 2016/17 Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair Professor at Stanford University.