ABSTRACT
Legal citizenship comprising legal residence and legal opportunity for earning a living is a core concept of exclusion. In a democratic state, ‘being illegal’ (together with being convicted and imprisoned) is regarded as one (and the only) legitimate reason for being excluded from other civil and social rights and entitlements. As a consequence, the lack of legal status makes migrants highly vulnerable in the face of all kinds of accidents and life’s vicissitudes. Labour migration is a strategy of coping with processes of exclusion ensuing from economic structural change in the country of origin. In Austria, a step-wise system of legal exclusion of migrants is established in order to function as intended barriers to inclusion in society, following the tradition of a ‘guest worker’ policy demanding the ‘flexibility’ of the foreign labour force. The existence of a relatively large and therefore somehow socially acceptable informal economic sector offers opportunities to make a living ‘without papers’.
