Angeworben: GastarbeiterInnen in Österreich in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren

Abstract

Verena Lorber’s study on—mainly Yugoslavian—labour migration to Austria in the 1960s and 1970s makes an important contribution to research on migration processes within the so-called Gastarbeitersystem (‘guest’ worker system). The term describes the post-1945 transnational system of labour migration which was based on the active recruitment policies of northern and western European industrial nations to acquire ‘guest’ workers for their rapidly growing economies, primarily from southern and eastern European countries. Fifty years after the bilateral recruitment agreement between Austria and Yugoslavia that was ratified in 1966, Verena Lorber enriches this still relatively young research field with a convincing multilevel analysis. Starting on a macro-level, she describes economic structures and political decisions in Austria that led to an active recruitment policy in the early 1960s. Continuous emigration from Austria to Germany and Switzerland from the late 1940s, and the effects of the so-called Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) led to a diminished workforce. In 1961 the government therefore made an agreement with trade unions and employers’ lobby organizations—the so-called Sozialpartner (social partners)—to recruit foreign workers within the limits of a fixed annual contingent. Lorber argues that these negotiations led to the emergence of an exceptionally strong social partnership (Sozialpartnerschaft) in Austria between the aforementioned lobbyists, trade unions and the government.