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.

Although Vienna’s population is steadily increasing since the late 1980s, the growth of its electorate cannot keep up with population growth. Recent population gains are driven by an increasing influx of international migrants. The result is a growing democratic deficit. As long as foreign nationals are excluded from participating in citywide or national elections, Vienna’s electorate gap is getting wider and wider.

Check out the Metropop collection of related blog posts and data visualisations:

• Two faces of the 2015 Vienna elections (2015-10-12) – Maps by Tina Frank & Ramon Bauer.
• The citizenship dilemma (2015-10-09) – Blog post by Ramon Bauer & Markus Speringer.
• Vienna’s electoral gap – district by district (2015-09-20) – Blog post by Ramon Bauer.
• The Vienna electorate gap poster (2015-09-20) – Infographic by Ramon Bauer, Tina Frank and Michael Holzapfel.
• Interactive data map of Vienna’s electorate gap, district by district (2015-09-17) – Data visualisation by Ramon Bauer, Tina Frank, Michael Holzapfel and Clemens Schrammel.
• The shrinking electorate of Vienna (2013-09-02) – Blog post by Ramon Bauer.

Vienna Electorate analysis and visualisations featured in Wiener Zeitung:

• Wiener, aber keine Österreicher (2015-09-26) – Article by Matthias Winterer.

Based on data from five Austrian censuses, researchers from the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital reconstructed Vienna’s demographic structure by age, sex and religion between 1971 and 2011. Their research project WIREL addresses the role of religions in shaping the social and demographic structure of the population of Vienna (I already reported on that in an older metropop post).

The increasing religious diversity of Vienna since 1971 was visualised by Ramon Bauer, Tina Frank, Anne Goujon and Clemens Schrammel. Their data visualisation connects the city’s changing demographic and religious landscape by highlighting changes in the religious composition as well as population size and age structure. The visualisation also shows how secularisation, migration, fertility and marriage patterns are linked to religious and demographic change in Vienna.

Try it yourself  by hovering over the chart area to change the period. Click on the four forces to see how they affect the population structure over time. Or even better, visit the webpage of the dataviz at www.wirel-project.at/dataviz – where you will find loads of additional information, as well as a more pleasant layout (compared to the slightly distorted iframe-version below which I had to squeeze into the slim metropop layout).

According to Anne Goujon, head of the WIREL research group, the aim of the reconstruction of the city’s religious composition is to produce a sound data basis for population projections of Vienna by age, sex and religion. Goujon and her team are already working on the scenarios for these projections which are planned to be published by the end of 2014.

Additional information

The WIREL dataviz website www.wirel-project.at/dataviz provides loads of additional information on the research project, the reconstruction of the religious composition, as well as links to a poster version of the data visualisation, the WIREL dataset and also to the source code of the interactive online visualisation at Github.

After Austria’s national election round in September 2013, it took the new (old) government a while to come up with a new five-year government programme in late December 2013. Some say it’s substantially vague, I say it also includes at least one fundamental mistake with respect to the percentage of the population living in rural areas. Here is the translation of the original quote on page 20:

“A focus of the Austrian government is to strengthen rural areas,
where 66 per cent of the population live.”

… see also: screenshot highlighting the demonstrable error, and original PDF (in german).

It is well-known that around 2010 planet Earth became predominately urban, with more than 50 per cent of the global population living in urban areas. It seems that this escaped the notice of Austria’s political elite. Accordingly to the government’s working programme for the period 2013 to 2018, only one third of Austria’s population is urban. In fact, already by the 1950s the proportion of Austria’s urban population reached more than 60 per cent, and further increased since then.

In order to separate guesstimates from evidence, it is necessary to consider different definitions of urban and rural areas. On top of that, these definitions vary from country to country – see national definitions of “urban” (collected by the UN). In the case of Austria, at least three different approaches of “urban” should be considered:

1. Communes of more than 5,000 inhabitants
   … a definition that is, in the case of Austria, also used by the UN.
2. Urban regions … as defined by Statistics Austria, taking into account population density as well commuting flows from the outer zones to the urban core.
3. Degree of urbanisation … accordingly to the OECD-Eurostat definition, which is distinguishing between three types of area by using a criterion of geographical contiguity in combination with population density based on grid cells of 1 km².

No matter how one might distinguish rural from urban populations, the majority of Austria’s population is certainly urban. In 2013, about 57 per cent lived in communes with more than 5,000 inhabitants and more than 66 per cent lived in urban areas (core and outer zones) – and not the other way round (in rural areas), as incorrectly stated in the government programme. Accordingly to the OECD-Eurostat definition, only 40 per cent of the population of Austria lived in thinly populated areas (i.e. rural areas), while almost 60 per cent lived in urban areas: 30 per cent in densely populated areas (i.e. cities or large urban area) and 29 per cent in intermediate populated areas (i.e. towns and suburbs or small urban area).

Well, I always hoped that politicians don’t get everything wrong – and still do hope so. However, since the government programme was published more than a month ago, it makes me a little bit worried that this odd error has not been corrected by now, i.e. by the end of January 2014.

During the 1980s, Vienna’s population started to grow again after a period of almost constant decline that lasted for more than half a century. And while the city’s population increased by 14 per cent between 1982 and 2012, the population eligible for voting decreased by 1 per cent. The gap between de-facto electorate and people ineligible for voting is opening more and more since 1989 because the city’s growth is driven by an increasing influx of international migrants, especially since the late 1990s. Most of the new arrivals are not eligible for voting in Austria – only Austrian citizens aged 16 years and older are. Hence, an increasing share of the city’s population is excluded from voting at national or city level.

A growing city with a stagnating number of eligible voters is facing a shrinking electorate. While population numbers in Vienna increased from 1.52 million in 1982 to 1.73 million in 2012, the number of people eligible for voting stagnated around 1.1 million. Actually, the number even declined between 1982 and 2000 (by 60.010), before slightly increasing again after the turn of the millennium. In 2007, Vienna’s electorate gained almost thirty thousand new members after a national electoral law reform that lowered the electoral age from 18 to 16 years. However, the number of people who are excluded from participating in elections – because they are younger than 16 years and/or of foreign nationality – increased by more than 60 per cent between 1982 and 2012 (from 365,889 to 587,406).

At the coming Austrian national elections (on 29 September 2013) more than a third of the population of Vienna (587.406) will be ineligible for voting. Besides those younger than 16 years in 2012 (263.535), there are 323.871 people that are 16 years or older but do not hold an Austrian passport. In 2012, foreign nationals of voting age accounted for almost 19 per cent of Vienna’s population and for more than 22 per cent of the population 16 years or older, which constitutes the “potential electorate” (at least by age). Since 1982, over the course of only one generation, the gap between actual and potential electorate increased almost fourfold: from 5.5 per cent to 18.7 per cent of Vienna’s entire population.

Besides the growing imbalance between the population eligible for voting and the total population of Vienna, also considerable changes in the electorate’s age structure come to light (when digging through the online database of Statistics Austria). Compared to 2002, which was three rounds of national elections ago, the age structure of Vienna’s electorate became considerably older. Interestingly enough, this must not be entirely ascribed to the growing number of elderly Austrians in Vienna. The share of the electorate 60+ increased by 6 per cent since 2002 while other and younger age groups within the electorate experienced even stronger gains (below 30 years by 31 per cent, and 45 to 59 years by 11 per cent); only the group of 30 to 44 year old Austrian citizens decreased by both absolute numbers (minus 29.616) and proportion (minus 18 per cent). This distinct decline of young Austrian adults can be attributed to some extent to the selective out-migration of young Austrian families from the core city to Vienna’s suburbia just beyond the municipal boundary.

The age composition of foreign nationals of voting age in Vienna also experienced considerable changes during the last decade. Between 2002 and 2012, the share of the group of foreign citizens aged 60+ nearly doubled, albeit from a very low level (from 18.572 to 36.187). All other age groups of foreign nationals of voting age were also strongly increasing – between 32 per cent (45 to 59 years) and 62 per cent (below 30 years). Most interestingly, the age group 30 to 44 years, contrary to Austrian citizens at this age, was not only growing since 2002 (by 52 per cent) but also constitutes the strongest age group among foreign nationals in Vienna. Within the group of young adults, those with foreign nationality accounted for almost a third of Vienna`s population aged 30 to 44 years in 2012.

Vienna is a growing and also a prospering city. Because this growth is driven by international migration, the share of the electorate – i.e. Austrian citizens aged 16 years and older (or 18 years and older before 2007) – decreased since the 1980s and especially since the late 1990s. A shrinking electorate means that fewer people participate in the political process; be it at national or city level. Since 1982, the gap between Vienna’s actual electorate and the potential electorate (including foreign population of voting age) has widened almost fourfold. Nearly a third of the young adult population of Vienna between 30 and 44 years – an age group that is caught in the middle of career prospects, family formation and parenthood – will not be represented in the political process of the upcoming Austrian national elections. Beyond that, the election turnouts of the national election rounds since 2002 show that not much more than 70 per cent of Vienna’s electorate are active voters. Assuming that this will also be the case at the upcoming 2013 elections, the vote of considerably less than 50 per cent of Vienna’s population (about 800.000 or less) will represent the city’s society at the next Austrian National Assembly.

Demographic topics are usually depicted as problems in the public media, often reduced to the negative implications of ageing, too low or too high fertility rates and migration. Of course, such a constrained way of viewing demography is unreasonable. But maybe such a biased representation of population issues must be also contributed to the way how, in general, people working in the wide field of population studies are presenting their research results? Yes, we all like population pyramids, but we also like great stories, especially if they are nicely told and illustrated.

I am in the great position to regularly enjoy some exceptional presentations of demographic city profiles, since I am lecturing a course in Basic Demography for students of the 4cities Erasmus Mundus programme in Urban Studies at the University of Vienna. The various backgrounds of the 4cities students cover the wide field of Urban Studies: from Geography to Economics, from Sociology to Architecture, from Planning to Journalism, from Politics to Performance Studies, and so on.

Like in any other university course, also my students have to prove the skills learned during the semester in order to earn their grades; in this course by presenting an urban demographic analysis and elaborating a final report. However, I encourage this truly interdisciplinary bunch of students to combine their newly acquired skills with their own creativity. In brief, their task was to embed personal professional interests – e.g. housing, integration, civil participation, spatial and social perception, urban culture and fabric, etc. – in the demographic analyses and to present it in a way that would attract their targeted audience, without being too much restricted by too many academic obstacles. In my opinion, this approach proved to be rather fruitful. A selection of demographic city profiles elaborated by this year’s 4citizens demonstrate that demographic information can (also) be conveyed by means of a smart graphic, short story, blog or piece of art.

Madrid – from boom to crisis

This presentation of Madrid by Nina Fräser and Elena Hernández Cuñat outline how the economic and demographic boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s were intertwined and point out that the economic crisis might pave the way for a demographic crisis. The gains through net migration were plummeting in 2008 and population growth is literally stalling since then. But what might happen when the crisis persists and especially the young and well educated start to leave the city and country behind in even greater numbers? – a topic that was already addressed in a previous METROPOP post.
Thumbs up for the appealing hand-drawn charts and figures!

Berlin – another bear in the wall

This well-illustrated demographic short story by Alice Etropolszky and Agata Walny about two Polish bears (father and son) – yes! this is actually a cute story – strolling around Berlin in search for a cosy place to spend hibernation. In doing so, they discover the city’s demographic structural and socio-spatial particularities. Please note that population pyramids and trend charts, indeed, can be made with “Gummibärchen” (gummy bears).

Leipzig – a city beyond shrinking

Jonas Aebi and Vanessa Hünnemeyer used a blog to elaborate and present their demographic analysis of Leipzig – from a shrinking city to a globally competing city. Their work focuses on urban policies in response to the significant demographic changes in the aftermath of the German reunification. Special emphasis is placed on the restructuring of the housing situation: from privatisation to destruction and from destruction to reconstruction, highlighting the specific situation in Leipzig West.

Gaza – the refugee city

This ambitious analysis by Liam Duffy and Mai Kjølsen unveils the sheer impossibility of a city that is, as a matter of fact, the world’s largest refugee camp – an isolated and heteronomous high density territory that is populated almost exclusively by displaced persons and their children and children’s children. Social circumstances such as (un)employment, poverty and education are addressed and connected to relevant demographic topics such as fertility and conflict. The final report was submitted in the form of a “demographic cluster bomb”, filled with neatly rolled and bound papers for each chapter.

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