A recent conference brought together the Ministry of the Interior, Maria Fekter, as well as a migration expert from the OECD, in order to speak about the prospects for upward social mobility and the integration of “second-generation immigrants” in Austria. However, the conference soon turned into a forum for unqualified statements and “provocative” questions, such as “how to punish parents who are unwilling to integrate?” The conference continued in a similar fashion, passing through “success stories” in the form of personal anecdotes, and including the ubiquitous question: “does Islam impede integration?”
The issue of the actual state of affairs for the “second generation” in the workplace, and the concrete ways by which this question might be addressed, were never brought up. Similarly to the general debate on integration in Austria, erroneous questions attempting to expose the ostensible ethnic and cultural obstacles to integration have prevented a constructive discussion on the solution of a social problem.
