Vienna has a growing democratic deficit. As long as voting rights are linked to citizenship, overly strict naturalisation requirements are weakening democratic participation. This is especially the case in countries of immigration, affecting first and foremost cities that are hubs of international migration – such as Vienna.

A series of Metropop blog posts and visualisations have already addressed the phenomenon of Vienna’s shrinking electorate. In fact, the city’s widening electorate gap is due to the fact that the growth of the city’s electorate cannot keep up with its population growth. This post examines the impact of Austria’s strict citizenship law on the size of Vienna’s electorate.

The shrinking electorate of Vienna (part III)

Although Vienna’s population grew by 16% between 1981 and 2014, the city’s electorate shrunk by 2% during the same period. Vienna’s democratic deficit is growing because voting rights are linked to citizenship – only Austrian nationals at voting age are enfranchised. Since the city’s population growth is almost entirely driven by international immigration, fewer and fewer residents are eligible to vote. Already one out of four people at voting age will be unable to participate in the citywide 2015 Vienna elections (to be held on 11 October).

A major factor for the widening gap between Vienna’s population size and the size of its electorate is that many international migrants remain foreign nationals even after years of residency in the city. One reason is that Austria has a relatively restrictive nationality law. Fist, citizenship is based on the principle of jus sanguinis, which means that Austrian-born children of foreign nationals are not automatically granted Austrian citizenship at birth. Second, citizenship is granted only to applicants who meet a range of requirements.

In 2006, an amendment of the Austrian nationality law made naturalisation requirements even stricter. This includes for example a minimum continuous residence of 10 years, knowledge of the German language (at B1 level), irreproachability (which also includes administrative penalties), a relatively high level of income, and the renunciation of foreign citizenship. Consequently, naturalisation rates and numbers have plummeted since 2006 and remained on a very low level ever since.

More than 40% of all foreign nationals in Austria are living in Vienna. Naturalisations have peaked in Austria’s capital city in 2003, simply because many migrants and refugees from former Yugoslavia who have arrived during the early 1990s had met the required minimum period of residence by then to become eligible for citizenship.

Since the amendment of the citizenship law became effective in 2006, the naturalisation rate (i.e. naturalisations per 100 foreign nationals) strongly declined: from more than 4% (in 2005) to just above 0.5% (in 2014). Since 2010, on average less than 2,400 foreign residents of Vienna have been granted citizenship per year. And the majority of these new Austrians were actually born in Austria.

So what … ?

Less naturalisations mean less Austrian citizens, and less Austrian citizens mean less eligible voters. In a growing city like Vienna, less eligible voters mean a growing democratic deficit (as already discussed here). Since the implementation of the stricter naturalisation requirements in 2006, Vienna’s population growth has even accelerated, driven by increased international immigration. Between 2005 and 2014, the city’s population has grown by 8.5% while the electorate has gained just 2.8%. However, the number of the people eligible to vote would not have increased at all if the lowering of the voting age from 18 years to 16 years would not have added 27,948 additional persons to the electorate in 2007.

What if … ?

What if naturalisation rates would not have declined? How many more people would have been added to Vienna’s electorate since 2006? Aiming to answer these questions we elaborated three scenarios, which illustrate the impact of the tightened citizenship law since 2006 on the size of Vienna’s electorate in 2014. For this reason, we just considered naturalisations of people at voting age – i.e. 18 years and older for 2006 and 16 years and older from 2007 onwards.

Scenario 1 keeps the annual average naturalisation rate 2001–2005 constant from 2006 onwards. Since naturalisation were at an all-time high during the period 2001–2005, scenario 2 is based on annual average rates 1996–2000, which rather correspond to the long-term trends since the 1980s. Scenario 3 depicts what would have happened if there had been no naturalisations at all since 2006.

In both main scenarios (1 and 2) the number of naturalised Austrians among Vienna’s residents by 2014 is several times higher than the actual numbers observed since the amendment of the nationality law became effective in 2006. During the eight years between 2006 and 2014, just 21,317 foreign residents in Vienna at voting age were granted Austrian citizenship.

So, let’s assume that the naturalisation rates observed during the period 2001–2005 (i.e. just before the requirements were tightened) would have continued after 2006 (scenario 1). In this case more than four times more foreign residents at voting age (98,028 persons) would have received Austrian citizenship. Consequently, Vienna would have had 76,711 more eligible voters by 2014 compared to the actual figures. When applying the slightly lower rates of the period 1996–2000 (scenario 2), in total 81,639 foreign residents at voting age would have been naturalised between 2006 and 2014. As a consequence, Vienna’s electorate would have added 60,322 more eligible voters by 2014.

The chart above illustrates the consequences of the stricter naturalisation requirements that became effective in 2006 on the size of Vienna’s electorate in 2014. As already mentioned, Vienna’s total population (all ages and nationalities) increased by 8.5% between 2005 and 2014 (dark line), while the city’s electorate grew only by 2.8% (red line).

In scenario 1 (blue line), which is based on naturalisation rates observed between 2001 and 2005, the electorate would have increased by 9.8% since 2006. This would have meant that the electorate would have stronger increase than the total population and, hence, a narrowing of Vienna’s electorate gap. Scenario 2 (yellow line), which shows the development after 2006 according to 1996–2000 naturalisation rates, would not be too far off from scenario 1. Vienna’s electorate would have increased by 8.3% – just 0.2% less than the change of the total population. In the case of the reference scenario 3 (grey dashed line), which depicts a hypothetical situation with no naturalisations since 2006, Vienna’s electorate would have increased by 0.9% until 2014 – if only because of the lowering of the voting age from 18 years to 16 years in 2007.

To put it plainly …

By 2014, almost one out of four residents of Vienna at voting age were not eligible to vote because of their (foreign) citizenship. The share of persons not eligible to vote increased from 18.0% in 2005 to 24.5% in 2014 mainly because of stricter naturalisation requirements that became effective in 2006. Assuming that the Austrian nationality law would not have been tightened, the share of residents at voting age unable to vote would have still increased until 2014, but significantly less: by 1.5% in scenario 1 and by 2.6% in scenario 2. In case there would have been no naturalisations at all since 2006 (scenario 3), the share of Vienna’s residents at voting age not eligible to vote would just be 1.5% higher than the actually observed 24.5%.

Vienna’s widening electorate gap is due to fact that voting rights in Austria are based on citizenship. The democratic deficit in Austria’s capital city has even become more severe after naturalisation requirements were tightened in 2006. So, how to narrow the gap between the city’s total population and its electorate?

On the one side, the consequences of citizenship laws need to be reconsidered. Too strict naturalization requirements literally produce more foreign nationals, which in turn leads to a diminishing share of residents eligible to vote. Given that the majority of naturalised persons in Vienna since 2006 were actually born in Austria, obviously jus sanguinis should be dropped in favour of jus soli, which would grant citizenship to everyone born in the country. On the other side, democratic participation could be strengthened if citizenship and voting rights would be decoupled. This is especially the case in countries and cities with a high share of international migrants. Voting rights that are bound to residency (e.g. after a stay of 3 years) would much better reflect the reality of a society shaped by immigration.

Although both options would make a lot of sense, the political reality in Austria is that neither a liberalisation of the citizenship law nor a voting law based on residency would find a legislative majority. However, without any reforms of Austria’s citizenship law and/or voting law Vienna’s electorate gap will definitely become even wider in the future.

References:

• Data sources: Statistics Austria and Statistics Vienna (MA23)

See also:

• Vienna electorate – A collection of Metropop contributions to the topic of Vienna’s shrinking electorate.

Two years ago, I discussed the deepening democratic deficit related to the increasing number of (disenfranchised) foreign nationals in Vienna in a Metropop post. Just in time for the upcoming 2015 Vienna election (to be held on 11 October), I take up the topic of Vienna’s shrinking electorate once more, and in more detail.

The shrinking electorate of Vienna (part II)

Back in 1971, virtually every inhabitant of Vienna was Austrian by nationality national, hence 96% of the people at voting age were eligible to vote. Since then, the share of foreign nationals at voting age has gone up and so has the share of people at voting age who are not eligible to vote: from 4% in 1971 to 16% in 2002 and up to 25% in 2015. This means that one out of four people at voting age will be unable to participate in the 2015 Vienna elections.

The period 2002 to 2015 is especially interesting with respect to Vienna’s widening electorate gap, i.e. the number or share of people old enough to vote who remain ineligible to do so. First, population growth driven by an increasing influx of international immigrants has accelerated since 2002, making Vienna one of the fastest growing capital cities in Europe. Second, tighter naturalisation requirements became effective in 2006, which makes it more difficult for foreign nationals to acquire Austrian citizenship and thus the right to vote. Third, the lowering of the voting age from 18 years to 16 years added 27,948 additional persons to the electorate in 2007. Finally, a solid register-based time series of annual population data since 2002 (by Statistics Austria) makes it possible to dig deeper into the topic.

Vienna’s electorate gap is increasing because the growth of the electorate is not keeping pace with population growth. The city’s total population grew by 14.4% between 2002 and 2015 (from less than 1.6 million to 1.8 million) while the electorate has increased by just 4.5% (or less than twenty-four thousand persons). The chart above clearly shows that at least half of the electorate’s net gains since 2002 can be attributed to the lowering of the voting age in 2007. The data map below illustrates how the electorate has changed between 2002 and 2015 (in %) in relation to the total population, district by district.

See also our Vienna electorate gap infographic (elaborated together with Tina Frank and Michael Holzapfel) as well as the interactive data map (coded by Clemens Schrammel).

All districts of Vienna gained population between 2002 and 2015 except for the 1st district. The combination of population growth and a stagnating or decreasing electorate (as observed since 2002) affected the city’s twenty-three districts differently. In general, the gap between total population and eligible voters has widened everywhere across Vienna. However, some districts with a strong population growth had only small electorate gains (such as the 10th, 11th, and 12th districts). Other districts experienced an average population growth but a decline of the electorate, which also resulted in a widening gap (such as the 4th, 9th , 18th, and 20th districts). But there are also districts with both a strong population growth since 2002 and a moderate increase in the electorate gap, with the best example being the 22nd district.

Note: Red columns show the share of people who are eligible to vote, grey columns indicate the share of those who are ineligible to vote (in%). Click image to enlarge.

As of the beginning of 2015, Vienna’s electorate gap was widest in the 15th district, where less than 62% of the voting-age population is eligible to vote. Several other districts feature electoral representation below 70%. Smaller electoral gaps with respect to the citywide average are prevalent mainly in outer districts (such as the 13th, 19th, 21th, 22nd, and 23rd district) – check out our infographic for additional maps.

Vienna’s electorate gap varies significantly by age. In general, the share of eligible voters is lower in younger age groups (below 45 years) and higher in older age groups. This is mainly because the vast majority of international immigrants are young adults. Immigrants who remain in Vienna for some years often eventually acquire Austrian citizenship, and hence become part of the electorate.

Note: Red columns show the share of people who are eligible to vote, grey columns indicate the share of those who are ineligible to vote (in%). Click image to enlarge.

Differentiating by broad age groups, only two-thirds of 16 to 29 year-olds are eligible for voting. The share of young voters differs between Vienna’s districts, ranging from 54% (15th district) to 81% (21st district). The city’s electorate gap is widest among those between 30 and 44 years of age. Only 63% of the population at young working age is eligible to vote. Their share is lowest in the 15th district, where half of young adults are excluded from participating in citywide or national elections. Those at prime working age between 45 and 59 years have a smaller average electorate gap. The citywide average of eligible voters in this age group is 80%, which ranges from 66% (15th district) to 88% (22nd and 23rd district). The electorate gap amongst residents age 60+ is the smallest in Vienna, with 90% eligible to vote. Although Vienna’s seniors represent only about 22% of the total population, they account for 31% of Vienna’s 2015 electorate.

Who is left to vote?

Vienna has a growing democratic deficit. Already, 25% of the voting-age population is excluded from participating in citywide and national elections. On top of that, not every eligible voter is actually going to the polls. In Vienna, the average voter turnout at national and federal-state elections since 2002 is 68.8%. Assuming this average turnout for the coming 2015 Vienna elections, only 784.000 persons, or around 43% of Vienna’s entire population, will elect the next city council.

A widening electorate gap due to an increase in foreign nationals is a predominately urban phenomenon. Cities are hubs of international migration. Vienna, for example, represents 21% of the Austrian population and more than 40% of its share of foreign nationals. The situation in the Austrian capital city exemplifies an increasing democratic deficit that is prevalent in many other cities with strong population growth driven by international migration.

So, how to narrow an electorate gap? In countries with rather strict naturalisation requirements such as Austria, a less restrictive legislation would generate more eligible voters (a forthcoming Metropop post will deal with this topic). Another option is to link the eligibility for voting to the length of residency rather than to the nationality. Such a paradigm shift would ensure that almost every citizen would be enabled to participate in the political process.

References:

• Population data: Statistics Austria
• Voter turnout data: City of Vienna

See also:

• Vienna electorate – A collection of Metropop contributions to the topic of Vienna’s shrinking electorate.
• Vienna’s electorate gap infographic – Available for download as PDF poster.
• Vienna’s electorate gap data map – Interactive data map of Vienna (district by district).
• London Squared Map – Innovative data map and inspiration for the Metropop Vienna electorate gap data map.

How did the share of foreign nationals in Vienna evolve since 1971? What are the changes of the total population in relation to changes in the electorate since 2002? Are there any significant differences by age? This data-driven infographic by Ramon Bauer, Tina Frank and Michael Holzapfel provides answers to these questions – district by district.

Download the PDF poster!

See also:

• Interactive data map (coded by Clemens Schrammel)
• Blog post on Vienna’s electorate gap – district by district (by Ramon Bauer)
• Collection of Metropop contributions dealing with the topic of Vienna’s shrinking electorate

Measuring global migration flows is a difficult task because data on bilateral international migration flows often does not exist. Available migration data is usually based on information on foreign-born population stocks. New estimates developed by Guy Abel and Nikola Sander quantify bilateral international migration flows based on migration stock data from the United Nations. In order to communicate the new dataset on international migration, researchers from the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital together with coders from Null2 jointly developed a new interactive data visualisation, which illustrates the global flow of people (at www.global-migration.info).

Visualising global migration flows is also rather tricky. Commonly used migration maps that visualise place-to-place flows often fall short of conveying the complexities of human movement in an effective and visually appealing manner. Based on a circular plot, this new approach for visualising migration flows allows to explore the global flow of people between and within regions, as well as for individual countries, for five-year periods between 1990 and 2010. By hovering across the plot, the data can be experienced intuitively – allowing to explore complex flows that are otherwise hidden in a table with some thousand cells (see screenshot below from www.global-migration.info).

For example, were you aware of the globalised nature of out-flows from South Asia, …

… or how strong migration flows are within Africa relative to flows from Africa to more developed regions?

Try it yourself! … and also watch the short animation (produced by Nikola Sander) that explains the complexity of estimating and visualising the global flow of people in just 4 minutes.

Links, references and data sources:

• The Global Flow of People – Online data visualisation by Nikola Sander, Guy Abel, Ramon Bauer, Johannes Schmidt, Andi Pieper, and Elvira Stein.
• Download the data: global migration flows (1990 – 2010) – Dataset by Wittgenstein Centre of Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/OEAW, WU)
• Global Migration Data Sheet (2005–2010) – Poster (pdf) by Nikola Sander, Guy Abel and Ramon Bauer. Vienna Institute of Demography (Wittgenstein Centre).
• Quantifying Global International Migration Flows – Article by Guy Abel and Nikola Sander. Published in Science, 343 (6178) (Accepted Version).
• Visualising Migration Flow Data using Circos, R and d3.js – Article by Nikola Sander, Guy Abel, Ramon Bauer and Johannes Schmidt. VID Working Paper 02/2014, Vienna Institute of Demography.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Gastarbeiter (guest workers) from Southern European countries (like Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal and the former Yugoslavia) as well as Turkey poured into Germany to fill the jobs that Germans didn’t want. After the German reunification, unemployment was on the rise and reached record highs by the late 1990s. The direction of labour migration seemed to be reversed, as thousands of young and skilled Germans started to look for jobs elsewhere in Europe (especially in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Austria and Switzerland). But Germany’s economy recuperated and unemployment is constantly decreasing since 2005, seemingly unimpressed by the global economic and labour market crises. In 2011, more people in Germany were in employment than ever before and unemployment rate settled in the single digits. While many European economies and labour markets are facing doom and gloom, Germany is booming – and is confronted with a shortage of workers.

Contrary to the labour market demands of the 1960s, as full employment lead to a shortage of unskilled workers in low-wage sectors, nowadays German companies are struggling to find enough skilled workers. Although low-wage employment accounts for more than 20 per cent – compared to only 13.5 per cent in Greece and 15.7 per cent in Spain (according to OECD figures) – this sector is quite saturated due to the Agenda 2010 labour market reforms that were initiated by the late Schröder government in 2003. The well-intended aim of the reforms to get the poorly-qualified and long-term unemployed back into the workforce, must be also associated to what Sarah Marsh and Holger Hansen calls the “The Dark Side of Germany’s Jobs Miracle”, as explained by in a recent Reuter’s article (8 Feb 2012):

Job growth in Germany has been especially strong for low wage and temporary agency employment because of deregulation and the promotion of flexible, low-income, state-subsidised so-called “mini-jobs”. (…) The number of full-time workers on low wages – sometimes defined as less than two thirds of middle income – rose by 13.5 percent to 4.3 million between 2005 and 2010, three times faster than other employment, according to the Labour Office.

Since more than a generation, Germany’s demography is caught in a low-fertility trap that hardly can be compensated by immigration, thus the population is not only ageing but is actually already shrinking. Due to this demographic momentum, the German workforce potential might decline by around 6.5 million until 2025 (as estimated by the Federal Employment Agency in 2011), if immigration does not increase significantly. However, during 2008 and 2009 – and for the first time in decades – more people left Germany than arrived there, but net migration turned positive again in 2010 (see chart below). Beyond quantity, it is also the qualitative aspect of immigration that counts in order to cope with the chronic demand of the German industry for skilled labour. While many young and especially highly educated left Germany behind during the last decade (and still do so), new and existing programs and initiatives that promote skilled immigration to Germany did not pay off yet.

Only recently, German politicians became quite pro-active in their attempt to kick-off skilled immigration. In February 2012, on a visit to Madrid, German Chancellor Angelika Merkel encouraged young and skilled Spaniards to escape unemployment by getting a job in Germany – and, by doing so, prompted a rush on German courses in many Spanish cities. Following Merkel’s strong hint, Germany’s Employment Agency organized first job fairs in countries like Portugal, hunting skilled labour for short-staffed companies back home. Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s minister for employment, wrapped up these recent efforts into a political win-win situation: “Germany’s economy plays its part in combating the unemployment crisis in hard-hit Southern European countries”.

One has to agree with the German ladies when looking at the evidence of diverging trends in unemployment across Europe. While unemployment is persistently decreasing in Germany, it is on the rise in many other countries. In fact, unemployment rates even more than doubled in countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal since Lehman Brothers closed their doors in 2008, reaching more than 20 per cent in Spain and Greece and around 15 per cent in Portugal (by Feb 2012). Even more dramatically, the youth unemployment rate (for people aged 16 to 24 years) also doubled in many countries and broke through the 50 per cent barrier by early 2012, while youth unemployment in Germany decreased below ten per cent during the same period. Moreover, the unemployment rate for higher (tertiary) educated rests below three per cent in Germany, while the rate for lower educated (with only compulsory education or less) is six times higher. Educational differences in unemployment are significantly smaller in Spain and Portugal (times 2.5) and nearly non-existent in Greece.

Taking these disparities into account it appears quite rational, if those young and often well-educated, but unemployed people in economically hard-hit countries of Southern (and also Eastern) Europe would take advantage of the common European labour-market, which is open to all citizens of (most) EU Member States. Institutions like EURES – the European Job Mobility Portal and other initiatives like joint job fairs will help to channel regional and local labour demands and supplies, and – let’s think “win-win – enable young Europeans to escape local unemployment while supplying the urgently needed labour to the drivers of the European economy like the buzzing German Wirtschaftsmotor.

Like Germany, also other intact and prospering economies and labour markets are first and foremost looking for skilled labour. New labour migration flows from Southern Europe will differ strongly from the generation of Gastarbeiter in the 1960s and 1970s. Gastarbeiter 2.0, although originating from the same geographical regions, will be much more educated than previous waves of labour migrants. As a consequence, this new generation of immigrants might, on the one side, integrate much more smoothly into the host societies, when compared to their predecessors. On the other side, this human capital will be badly missed in Spain, Portugal or Greece, when these economies will (try to) regain their stability one day.

It remains to be seen, if such a migration dynamic will turn out to be a brain drain in the longer term, or rather a win-win situation as outlined by Frau von der Leyen; or even a win-win-win situation, if the generation Gastarbeiter 2.0 will circulate back to their places of origin, whenever their skills are needed back home. Since unemployment is still rising almost everywhere in Southern Europe for the fourth year in a row, more and more young and skilled people will depart Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to more promising destinations like Germany. For those concerned, the European labour market – granting EU nationals the right to full mobility between the Member States –  is a great opportunity to escape unemployment and the lack of prospects at home, by looking for a better bid somewhere else in Europe. However, a new wave of emigration will not resolve the crisis in those EU countries affected, but it could at least improve the individual prospects of many EU citizens.

Additional links, references and data sources:

• DESTATIS (German Federal Statistical Office): Employment Figures (in german only)
• DESTATIS (German Federal Statistical Office): Population (in german only)
• EUROSTAT: Unemployment Statistics
• OECD Employment Database