Start page Solidarities Reconfigured: Central-Eastern European Migrants Working in Refugee Services in Austria

Solidarities Reconfigured: Central-Eastern European Migrants Working in Refugee Services in Austria

Principal investigator: Ildikó Zakariás

Funding: CEU Institute for Advanced Study, Bolyai Research Grant, NKFIH FK

Period: 2021-2026

Research questions and objectives: 

Political, economic, environmental and social crises induced by world politics and global capitalism have caused millions of people from the Global South to search for survival and a better life afar from their homes, and among other places, also in Western Europe and in Austria. A great variety of institutions, organisations and projects were created in destination countries,  intended to help refugees and asylum seekers obtain education and employment.

While having the mandate to channel newly arriving workforce towards the labour market, the birth of these institutions also created further needs for labour. These positions (mainly teaching and social work) have been at significant extent filled with migrants arriving from Central and Eastern European countries.

My research aims to explore how such encounters of people with various migration experience shape ideologies of solidarity and rejection. How do intra-EU migrants,  themselves struggling to solidify their positions in Western European labour markets, become ‘hosts’ for others; and how this affects ideologies of solidarity and rejection. How do ideas on sameness and difference, on responsibility and security, on inclusion and exclusion become recreated or altered, when both ‘hosts’ and those ‘arriving’ have experience, biographies and identities related to migration.

The research takes the case of Austria, and will be based on interviews with several groups: with Central and Eastern European immigrants teaching or doing social work in Austrian refugee adult education institutions; as well as with their students and clients, managers and coordinators of these institutions, and ‘local’ employees with Austrian citizenship and Austrian higher education credentials.

Research methodology:

Mixed methods:

  • Qualitative methods: semi-structured interviews, participant observation, document analysis, media analysis
  • Quantitative methods: analysing population register data, online statistical survey

 

Research history:

Preliminary research results:

Peer-reviewed publications in journals:

Zakariás, I., & Al-Awami, N. (2023). Adult Migrants' Language Training in Austria: The Role of Central and Eastern European Teachers. Social Inclusion, 11(4), 69-79. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v11i4.7220 (mtmt: 34342965)

Zakariás, I., & Al-Awami, N. (2024). Kelet-európai némettanárok az ausztriai menekültek és bevándorlók nyelvoktatásában. REGIO: KISEBBSÉG KULTÚRA POLITIKA TÁRSADALOM, 32(4), 84-110. https://doi.org/10.17355/rkkpt.v32i4.84 (mtmt: 35650636)

Zakariás, I: Beyond segmentation – Flexibilised jobs, work-devaluation and migrant labour in adult education in Austria. Journal of International Migration and Integration (accepted)

Conference presentations:

  • Discourses of migrant and refugee deservingness in Austrian refugee services, Living Uncertainties, SIEF 2023, Brno 7-10. in Panel: Modalities of deservingness in current solidarity spaces in Europe.
  • CEE language teachers in migrant and refugee services in Austria: Challenging, spanning or recreating boundaries? 20th IMISCOE Annual Conference, 3-6 July, 2023. (with Nora Al-Awami)
  • Morality at work in adult migrants language teaching services in Austria. Morality at Work - Ethnographic Articulations of Ethics and Labour Workshop, Newcastle University, May 23rd & 24th, 2024
  • Central and Eastern European Teachers in German Language Training for Migrants in Austria, Panel: Education and language as socio-cultural capital in contexts of migration. 4th Vienna Anthropology Days, University of Vienna, September 23-25, 2024.
  • Devaluation of labour and professional trajectories in adult education in Austria – a ’demigrantisation’ perspective. Tension Trust and Transformation 16th Biennial Conference ESA 2024, 27-30 August, University of Porto.
  • Professional trajectories, devaluation of labour and ’doing migration’ in adult education in Austria, 2025 IMISCOE Annual Conference, Paris–Aubervilliers, 1-4 July, 2025.
  • Beyond segmentation – Flexibilised jobs, work-devaluation and migrant labour in adult education in Austria, ESA RN35 2025 Midterm Conference, Athens, 27-28 November, 2025