ABSTRACT
For years, Department 62 of the Viennese Municipal Authorities, its chief council officer, Hans Werner Sokop, and the head of Department III of the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, Manfred Matzka – he and ‘his’ section are responsible for passports, citizenship, refugees and aliens – have been ‘objects’ of public political critique and controversial discussion. They were accused of issuing notifications that reject aliens’ applications for residence permits (Department 62) or appeals against refusals of residence permits (Department III) on the basis of fallacious arguments, which sometimes even bordered ‘culturalistracist’ reasoning and, thus, represented a blatant example of ‘institutional racism’. It is the discourse about the authorities’ refusals of residence permits for aliens in Austria in 1996, 1997 and 1998 that we will analyse in this chapter against the methodical and theoretical background presented in chapter 2.
