Doing ‘Integration’ at Austrian Schools: The Role of Street-Level Bureaucrats

Austrian schools are increasingly becoming the locus of public debates on ‘integration’. A set of different public policies—ranging from the social-democratic and egalitarian “first language teaching” to more segregative measures such as “German support classes”—are in place whose implementation is the responsibility of the school staff. Drawing on hegemony-critical conceptualizations of the state in combination with Lipsky’s street-level bureaucrat approach, this article interprets contradictions in implementing policies as reflections of ongoing struggles over hegemony within the state. By analyzing the discourses and practices of street-level bureaucrats at schools we can better understand competing means and meanings of ‘integration’—bundled into different hegemony projects. Based on interviews and focus groups with school principals and teachers, our findings show that discretionary practices are embedded within, and responsive to, these competing hegemony projects: while some street-level bureaucrats reproduce the hegemonic, segregative integration discourse, others exercise discretion to implement more inclusive measures, thereby aligning with the integrative hegemony project. This helps to explain why, despite Austria’s political shift to the right, fully assimilationist agenda has not been consistently realized in practice.