Cultures of unwelcome: Understanding the everyday histories of exclusionary practices – A view from across the German border

Abstract

AbstractThis article sheds light on the socio‐cultural dynamics Merkel's open‐door policy set in motion in Austria. Based on the Anti‐Merkel discourses that came to infiltrate Austrian mainstream politics, it will show how the summer of displacements 2015 led to a pronounced move to the right. While many commentators have tended to link the post‐2015 triumph of reactionary parties to the sense of crisis caused by the few months the European Union opened its borders to asylum seekers, the article demonstrates that we need to be more careful in our analyses of the roots of exclusion. By zooming in on the everydayness of anti‐cosmopolitan practices in an Austrian mountain community, it argues that if we are to understand the current backlash against liberal and cosmopolitan ideas we need to pay attention to genealogies of exclusionary practices, or ‘cultures of unwelcome’.