From Retreating to Resisting: how Austrian-Turkish women deal with experiences of racism

Abstract

Recent European integration discourses are more and more structured by neo-racist topoi based on orientalist markers of difference. In the Austrian debate people of Turkish origins are particularly affected by such ascriptions. They are marked as a group not willing to integrate and culturally not fitting into Austrian society. In this discursive conglomerate women are identified as oppressed victims, lacking education and being in need of help. Using biographical narratives of young Austrian-Turkish women this paper reconstructs four modi of dealing with these discursive ascriptions and experiences of neo-racist othering: retreating and pragmatically reducing ambitions, trivializing racist experiences and assimilating to the mainstream, naming facts and aiming to improve the situation by communication, delegitimizing and ironically transcending racism.

Challenging Diversity: Steering Effects of Buzzwords in Projectified Health Care

“…The descriptions used for each group fall inconveniently in line with widespread stereotypes about Muslims in Austria (Hametner 2014). However, the psychologists were not ignorant of these potential consequences and were very conscious of the dangers of othering their Turkish-speaking clients.…”

“…As previously discussed, designing the health promotion project for diet groups separated based on gender and language coproduced representations of the clients that tended to inconveniently fall along the line of prevalent cultural stereotypes (Hametner 2014). Such representations not only tend to influence how people perceive themselves (Hacking 1986) but also affect how they are perceived in a wider public sphere through the health center's publications and conference presentations.…”