Austria between “social protection” and “emancipation”: Negotiating global flows, marketization and nostalgia

Abstract

Focused on Austria, a national context that still ranks amongst the comparatively more affluent and structurally resilient, this chapter examines diverse public discourses formulated in the context of the global and European economic crises since 2008 and their local impact; the economy’s perceived “disembedding” and hypercommodification are shown to lie at the heart of current Austrian concerns, further entrenching a clash between nationalist nostalgia and inclusive multiculturalism, respectively.