ABSTRACT
The economic situation and the "global" changes taking place in Austria and elsewhere in the last twenty-five years are not the only reasons for the rapid change in social and economic attitudes towards migration. The issue of immigration has been central to the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) throughout the given time frame from 1982 until the present. Thus, the dawn of a new era of freedom in Eastern and Central Europe led to the abrupt introduction of tough new immigration laws in Austria. In FPO-OVP government parliamentary statements, the OVP speakers were at pains to define their vision and conception of "integration." The far-reaching opportunism and realpolitik of post-war Austrian politics have always tended to promote the normalization of populist discourse within the political mainstream. According to migrants, despite the fact that discrimination within the workplace remains the most obvious and easiest to detect, it still is prevalent in many Austrian private and public companies.
