Yugoslav Labor Migrants Emerging as the Austrian Working Class (1960-1980)

What role did class and related cultural capital play in Austrian-Yugoslav bilateral relations? In the post-war Austria, the problem of class segregation was refractured by the ideology of social consolidation introduced with the post-Marshall plan prosperity. The image of weakening social class differences persisted in ignorance of incoming labor migration. As elsewhere in post-war Western Europe, the incoming migrants were allowed to work but sidelined in social integration and state protection, opening ground for the racialization of Yugoslavs, Turks, and other southern migrant groups as an underclass. The article explores how sociocultural difference was acknowledged, dealt with, and reproduced by the authors in the official documents of the Yugoslav state. The labor migrants were an important feature of the negotiations, but the article shows how class entanglements went beyond them and informed decisions of the state officials.