Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie 48 (2023), 1

From the 1990s onward, Austria has experienced notable economic and social changes that have affected employment relations and the labor market as well as the welfare state and the educational system. These changes are related to the growing importance of the neo-liberal economic program, which is driving international competition and the development of the global economy. In this vein, Austria has also had to adopt an austerity policy in order to fulfill the Maastricht criteria for becoming a member of the European Union. Like other countries, Austria had to cope with the economic crisis in the early 1990s, the breakdown of the New Economy in 2000, the financial crisis in 2008–2009, the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the current energy crisis. Austrians have also been confronted with increased migration because of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine. Overall, Austria has been able to manage these challenges reasonably well.

Social security in Austria has remained robust due to extensive state redistribution (Rocha-Akis et al. 2019; Obinger 2015). Nonetheless, the economic and social changes that have occurred since the 1990s have also had negative consequences, such as increased low-wage employment (Fritsch et al. 2014), precarious employment (Flecker 2018), and the proliferation of the so-called “working poor” (Verwiebe and Fritsch 2011). Simultaneously, job profiles and occupational requirements have rapidly changed due to technological advancements and the internationalization of the economy, with previously central professional competencies being devalued (Krzywdzinski et al. 2015) and numerous new job types emerging.

In an environment of international competition, these new jobs require a highly skilled and educated workforce, and thus an excellent educational system. While the Austrian vocational training system is still seen as functional because it facilitates early transition and integration into the labor market (Schoon and Bynner 2019), there has been a great need to reform other areas of the school system for many years. According to national and international studies (e.g., OECD 2019; BIFIE 2018, 2019), performance and social permeability within the school system has remained comparably low. Austria has a rather high proportion of students with low competencies, with students with an immigrant background being particularly affected (Steiner et al. 2016; Bacher 2020). Children from working-class families or with an immigrant background still have a lower probability of completing high school and graduating from university than children with more highly educated parents (Vogtenhuber et al. 2016; OECD 2016; Suchań et al. 2019). In addition, comparative analyses of the returns to education for different generations have shown that education no longer “pays off” to the same extent for younger generations, i.e., it is no longer reflected in higher incomes, as was the case for older generations, even though returns are still positive (Bacher and Moosbrugger 2018). Despite these well-known problems and deficiencies, relevant institutional barriers in Austria (Crul et al. 2012), such as the late start of elementary education, half-day schools, and early track selecting, still exist. Although challenges within the educational system, such as the proportion of children with an immigrant background, have increased during the last decade, educational expenditures per student have remained constant over the years and need-based financing is still missing. For example, according to samples from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the proportion of children with an immigrant background has increased from 2012 to 2018, from 16.5 to 22.7% (Suchán et al. 2019; Schwantner et al. 2013).

Many social inequalities and grievances have been mitigated by the extensive conservative welfare state system in Austria, which is characterized by high social spending (transfers and benefits) and substantial social security contributions (Esping-Andersen 1990; Obinger 2015). This system, although successful in fighting poverty, limiting differences in household income between the rich and the poor, and securing the unemployed, comes at the cost of a high tax burden on income (Obinger 2015). At the same time, there is a high concentration of wealth in only a few hands, and inheritance or wealth taxes do not exist in Austria (Fessler and Schürz 2020). In addition, the conservative welfare state reproduces gender inequalities to a certain extent, meaning that the modernized male breadwinner model with women and especially mothers being employed only part-time is still dominant (Beham-Rabanser et al. 2019; Höllinger 2019). This results in high gender care gaps, pay gaps, and pension gaps (Mayrhuber 2017, 2020). A further result of the conservative welfare state is a system of temporary integration that perceives immigrants and refugees as foreigners and imposes strong barriers to naturalization and family reunion (Valchars and Bauböck 2021; Solano and Huddleston 2020).

Large segments of the Austrian population seem to generally approve large-scale state redistribution by the conservative welfare state and to endorse notions of social justice that combine meritocratic principles and solidarity. Population surveys such as the Social Survey Austria and the International Social Survey Programme show that Austrians are very critical about income (Eder and Höllinger 2019) and wealth inequality, in favoring instead state redistribution and high taxes for high-income earners (Grausgruber 2019). Thereby, the underlying principle of social justice has historically strengthened, dating back to the social democratic and Christian-social tradition of the country, which is also deeply rooted in the country’s institutions and has thus remained rather persistent across time. However, the narrowing opportunities for social advancement due to the economic, social, and sociopolitical developments of the last two to three decades have caused some population groups to see themselves as increasingly at risk of social decline, particularly the performance-oriented middle classes (Verwiebe and Wiesböck 2021).