Thai communities in Vienna

'This article provides a short overview on Thais in Vienna, offering some selected impressions of the second largest South-East Asian community in Austria. For a long time immigrants have mainly been portrayed as cheap labor force and low-skilled workers who were recruited in order to counter the problem of labor shortage in Austria (Castles & Miller, 2003; Mayer, 2010). Indeed, immigrants from all over the world have shaped the appearance and development of Vienna for centuries. In this context, not much is known about South-East Asian communities in Vienna. Official data of Statistik Austria (2010a) registered 22,551 South-East Asians in Austria, with more than half of them living in Vienna. This number includes persons who hold a South-East Asian citizenship (whether they were born in Austria or abroad) as well as persons who were born in South-East Asia but now hold Austrian citizenship.' (extract

Gender, class, and paradoxical mobilities of Thai marriage migrants in Austria

In this paper, we investigate whether marriage‐related migration promotes socioeconomic mobility and how class belonging and educational background affects Thai women's migration experience and socioeconomic mobility. Drawing on qualitative interviews, supported by a questionnaire survey with Thai women living in Austria and who are in a relationship with a Western male citizen, we seek to dismantle simplistic notions about hypergamy and question common assumption about marrying up or down in migration contexts. We compare socioeconomic indicators such as formal education, occupation, and income before and after the migration and analyse migrants’ experiences in Austria. The results show a complex picture of upward and downward socioeconomic mobilities. Two distinct scenarios of paradoxical mobilities have been identified. On the one hand, some migrants feel empowered (when experiencing economic downward mobility) as they enjoy the freedom of living in Austria, while on the other hand, those migrants experiencing upward mobility feel a loss of their personal autonomy