Page - 73 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Petra Herczeg | Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Austria 73 2.1 Ethnicity as a Nation-Building Paradigm Austria was anxious to perceive itself as “eine gute politisch-konsensuale Staatsnation” (Wodak et al 1995, 7), as an uncontested nation oriented to the state and not to a specific (in this case, German) people. Languages were not to play a part in the development of a new Austrian identity (de Cillia 1995, 4). Yet, during this entire period Austrian language policies actually aimed at the assimilation of members of minority groups and their languages. When members of ethnic minorities demand their rights, the majority’s perception of itself as an in-group can be reinforced, and this can lead to an exaggerated idealization of the in-group (Treibel 1993, 334f), with the consequence that ethnic and national affiliations are exploited. In this context, the majority identifies itself as “we”/“us”, while members of minority groups become “them”/“others”. In the public sphere, only “major” languages are perceived; the “minor” languages of ethnic minorities are only noticed if issues concerning ethnic groups are reported on. The majority population is poorly informed about minority issues and sees minorities mainly as troublemakers who are constantly making demands and never seem satisfied. The demands of ethnic groups seem to annoy the general public. Various ethnic groups are often perceived as a single consistent group characterized by its own rituals, languages, and cultural expressions. The public image of ethnic groups, especially that shown on television, is dominated by clichés that present such groups primarily in folkloristic contexts. A glance at the situation of the language minorities in Burgenland shows that, on the one hand, they have acquired a special legal status and that efforts have been made to officially preserve regional languages, but that language assimilation is a dominant trend, so that only small and somewhat concerned groups of minority language users persevere (Baumgartner 2000). Even after 20 years, Perchinig’s description of Austrian public debates on minorities is still accurate. He maintains that much of the debate centers on the criterion of language, and that no new arguments related to objective or subjective criteria of belonging to a minority have been found. For one side (“objective”) “assimilation” primarily consists in abandoning the minority language; for the other side assimilation means the abandonment of “self-identification as part of the minority” (Perchinig 1988, 134). Ethnic identity (a sense of belonging to a particular group) expresses itself in the use of a common language and of cultural codes, in acting together as a group and in sharing a common history (Fillitz 2003, 24). Ethnic identity, one of the most complex concepts of sociological theory, is to be understood as a process and not as a constant. Max Weber defined ethnic groups on a symbolic level as “those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in