Fleeing immigration to Austria, a country of immigrants itself

Emigrating to Austria: the paradox of fleeing immigration

Considering Austria as a refuge when what you want to leave behind is the immigration you see in Barcelona is something of a mirage. The Alpine country has a different mix of foreigners -Turks, Balkans, Eastern Europeans- but the migration reality does not disappear: it changes origin. Those who consider it as a destination usually arrive with intermediate-level German and the hope of going unnoticed. Field experience says that physical appearance is precisely what matters least.

The German you have and the one you will encounter

A freshly obtained B2 level of German opens doors in Austria, including cities like Graz, and works for German-speaking Switzerland with caveats. The problem is Schweizerdeutsch: a dialect with no standardized grammar which, according to a voice settled in Bern for 40 years, is not studied, only learned on the street. Hochdeutsch lets you get started and is an official language in Switzerland, but daily life is spoken in dialect. Translation: you can arrive with good German and end up outside the real conversation.

Wages, social distance and the Eastern alternatives

Austria pays good wages and the social security system works, with an immigration policy described as tough. But outside Vienna the picture deflates: an experience with a brother settled there defines the country as the shabby version of Switzerland and Germany, a wasteland with pretty landscapes. In Vienna, classism and poshness are noticeable; Austrians in general are described as distant, arrogant and not very cosmopolitan. The contrast with the Germans, who are considered nicer people, comes up repeatedly.

Faced with that portrait, the conversation shifts to Switzerland as the lesser evil -if you accept the dialect- and to Lithuania or Estonia for those who prefer societies less permeable to political correctness. Hungary appears on the map, but receives harsh criticism from those who have set foot in Budapest. Eastern Europe sneaks in as a third way in a debate that no longer looks only westward.

The question floating at the end is not whether Austria is better than Spain, but whether the emigrant is willing to be a foreigner forever. You can have blue eyes, fluent German and an Austrian look; even so, they will read you as Spanish. And neither Switzerland nor Graz changes that.