This paper investigates how immigration and concerns over integration are changing established modes of cooperation between church and state in Austria. Focusing on the relationship between officially recognised Muslim and Eastern Orthodox organisations and the state, we examine how the mounting politicisation of immigrant integration has led the state to collaborate with minority religious organisations as representatives of immigrants and is increasing the opportunities for such religious groups to be visible and express voice in the public sphere. Based on interviews, policy documents and literature, we analyse how the modes of cooperation between religious organisations and the state are moving from a narrow and institutionalised collaboration on policy issues exclusively related to religion to a broader but more fluid and uncertain form of symbolic cooperation. We argue that, within this modified setting, recognised minority religious organisations are gradually assuming the function of political entrepreneurs who speak for the entire immigrant community. This, in turn, creates tensions within and between religious groups, and risks overstating religion as a factor in the integration of immigrants. Our comparison between Muslim and Eastern Orthodox religious organisations shows that, notwithstanding the greater salience of Islam, they both benefit from the new role of religion in integration issues.
This article critically reviews the literature on morality policies and the politics of values, focusing in particular on the question of what defines morality policies as a specific policy field. Drawing from both US American and European literature, it surveys to which extent morality policies can be understood as a particular form of contention over primary values, a way of framing, a cultural conflict, a specific type of politics, or a class of substantive policy issues. The article then develops a new approach that draws on political theory and pays particular attention to the role of religion, arguing that morality policies reflect deep divisions within modern societies over key principles of political liberalism.
This article draws insights from Austria in order to analyze if civic integration policies constitute an exclusionary tool of migration control and acculturation. In order to do so, the article presents an analytical framework operationalizing the notion of exclusion for civic integration policies, and applies this framework to systematically collected data on the agenda-setting, legal formulation, implementation, and outcomes of civic integration conditions in Austria. The findings show that civic integration in Austria has thus far not been primarily used as an exclusionary tool. Rather, integration conditions on the acquisition of membership rights can be understood as an instance of symbolic politics, where the primary aim of the policy is to send the restrictive message that the government is controlling and reducing immigration and promoting assimilation, albeit the policy was not designed to achieve these material effects.
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