Sovereignist or Economic Interests? Migration debates in Austria during Covid-19

Migration politics have been characterized by a dilemma between openness driven by economic interests and closedness driven by securitized and socio-cultural concerns as the migration scholar Hollifield captured the famous liberal migration paradox in capitalist democracies. The Covid-19 crisis has invigorated this dilemma, and partly challenged it dichotomous character, as it has driven ideas about migrants in key sectors such as health, and food production and distribution as essential workers. Essential workers have been defined not only essential in terms of the economy, but also in terms of the well-being of the entire community. In the wake of this new emphasis on essential workers some governments have also considered and enacted decisive policy changes as regards this group of migrants, including regularization schemes. In this paper we explore the debate on migrant essential workers in Austria by focusing on governmental players, as well as challenger parties, both central players in politicizing migration in the past decades. Austria represents a state with strong anti-migrant political parties and relatively negative migration attitudes. The country had been early on affected during the health crisis, and strongly relies on migrant labor in sectors that were key to the crisis. The paper conducts a claim analysis collecting data from party press releases and parliamentary debates in the Covid years 2020 and 2021 addressing the following questions: Which major arguments emerged in debates about essential workers by Austrian political parties? Which impact, if at all, did the reliance on migrants in the labor market in key sectors during the pandemic have on overall migration party debates?