Abstrakt
The article deals with migrant integration policy in Vienna in the last two decades. The text discusses the normative concept of equal rights for migrants and analyses the policy of the key political power in Vienna, the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), concerning the key issues of structural integration on the local level: policies on naturalization, political participation, public housing, social aid, pre-school education, language courses and diversity.
The article finds that the SPÖ, whose integration policy is programmatically based on enhancing the equal opportunity of migrants, tried to act as a liberal party, especially at the time of the conservative federal government of ÖVP-FPÖ(BZÖ) from 2000 to 2006. The integration policy of the SPÖ government in Vienna was hampered by the limited competences of federal states and municipalities in the Austrian political system.
However, the SPÖ in Vienna did not fully take advantage of its power to better the structural integration of migrants, especially third-country nationals.