Penetrating Ethnic Communities

(I love it when Austrians try to speak English.) That's the given English translation of a seminar I’m taking, which basically throws 25 people in a room for three hours to informally discuss contemporary immigration to Austria. Today was the first course meeting, and it was one of the most fascinating experiences of my time in Austria. 

We first spoke in small groups about our perceptions of immigration / migrants / foreigners in Austria, and what types of contact we had with them. The strongest cultural difference I noticed came when we were trying to formulate a definition of assimilation / integration. No one mentioned naturalization as a marker of integration, so I asked directly, “Would you consider naturalization part of the process of integration? Do you have to be an Austrian citizen to be 'successfully' assimilated?” “No,” my groupmates said. “You can only become a citizen once you’re assimilated.” And that, I think, is a very different formulation of the national community. Austrian citizenship is like a prize that you get once you’ve already become Austrian, a visible marker of an internal transition. “The Austrians” are integrated, because the un-integrated are not permitted to become Austrians.

On the other hand, American citizenship is the way in which Americans are (supposed to be) created. Because Americans have so little to unite us, political as opposed to cultural citizenship takes on a strong meaning. Participating in American democracy, it is hoped, will turn you into an American. Of course, that means that not everyone with an American passport is an “assimilated” American (even in the relatively objective sense of English language capabilities), and thus American citizenship can’t effectively be used to separate “us” from “them.” And then you get things like the problematic construction of Asian-Americans as forever foreigners.

Another interesting point was that the idea of only minorities having ethnicity – and that only minority communities are ethnic -- went unchallenged. I asked whether Austrians would consider themselves as having an ethnicity, and my groupmates said that they probably wouldn’t. In Austria, provincial identities are very strong, and cultural markers vary quite widely from region to region (except for the biggies like religion and language, although with so many dialects, the latter is debatable). But these provincial identities aren’t characterized as ethnicities. That’s not necessarily worse, though, than the American “food, fun, and festivals multiculturalism,” whereby everyone has an ethnicity, and the fact that some ethnicities lead to marginalization and stigmatization, while others are trappings that can be taken on and off at will, is ignored.

This class ended at 12:15pm, and I’ve spent the last five hours pouring over everything that was said and trying to make sense of it. Drawing boundaries, especially ethnic boundaries, is always complicated and problematic. The Austrian and American cases are problematic in different ways, though, and have a lot to say to each other. And I can feel my cross-cultural awareness and capacities growing. Go learning!