Turkish immigrants and their descendants have become the main target of anti-immigrant political mobilization in Austria since the 1990s. They have come to epitomize the image of the Oriental enemy and the Muslim other. Based on these discursive constructions, Muslims in general, and Turks in particular, have often been described as unwilling to integrate into Austrian society. The articles in this special issue show not only that these discourses and exclusionary attitudes may result in discriminatory practices towards Turkish immigrants and their descendants in Austria, but also that the alleged unwillingness to integrate may be explained by the lack of effort made by the Austrian government and Austrian institutions to integrate this group.
IMISCOE International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in EuropeThe IMISCOE Network of Excellence unites over 500 researchers from European institutes specialising in studies of international migration, integration and social cohesion. The Network is funded by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission on Research, Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge-Based Society. Since its foundation in 2004, IMISCOE has developed an integrated, multidisciplinary and globally comparative research project led by scholars from all branches of the economic and social sciences, the humanities and law. The Network both furthers existing studies and pioneers new research in migration as a discipline. Priority is also given to promoting innovative lines of inquiry key to European policymaking and governance.The IMISCOE-Amsterdam University Press Series was created to make the Network's findings and results available to researchers, policymakers and practitioners, the media and other interested stakeholders. High-quality manuscripts authored by IMISCOE members and cooperating partners are published in one of four distinct series.
IMISCOE
Recent studies have shown that mainstage theatre has largely remained closed to immigrants and their descendants who want to enter the cultural institution as actors, directors and playwrights. This was explained with persistent homogeneous national narratives, gatekeepers denying immigrants and their descendants access and cultural policies pushing them into niches. This article adds to this the dimension of theatre history to understand first, why mainstage theatre in the German-speaking countries has remained closed to the new diversity brought by migration and second, why diversification, when it finally arrived, was more successful in Berlin than in Vienna. I regard the intricate link between theatre and nation-building as underlying the long exclusion of immigrants and their descendants in the German-speaking context. Subsequently, I argue that the more flexible theatre structures and the recent turn towards including immigrants and their descendants in cultural policy-making in Berlin have facilitated the career of an artist whose main aim was to address the exclusionary structures of theatre. Due to the limited research on this topic, I cannot claim my observations to be representative, but they provide a matrix for an in-depth analysis in other contexts.
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