Rural Poverty and its Consequences in Structurally Weak Rural Areas of Austria from the Mayors’ Perspective

Abstract

Poverty, material deprivation and marginalization are widespread phenomena in rural areas and since the 1980s, the subject of geographical research. In this paper, we combine the (spatial-related) aspects of rural poverty and quality of life when the perception and evaluation of poverty by local decision makers (mayors) is linked to their efforts to keep the municipality vital. The specific focus on the "inner view" on poverty illustrates the complexity of the issue: It is not only the well-known difficulty to identify the extent of rural poverty and deprivation in rural municipalities as statistical data and the "hiddenness" of poor people obstruct an objective view on it but also the individual perception of decision makers. The results from 40 mayors of structurally very weak (rural) municipalities in Austria reveals limitations of political dealings with poverty and marginalization and sets the context for a reinterpretation of public services on the background of the politically much favored civic engagement.

Vienna’s South-Eastern Hinterlands: Regional Development in the Austrian-Hungarian Border Area, 1910–2011

“…Analyses of international border areas have always been distinct aspects of rural studies, deserving of ongoing scholarly interest in the field (Kladivo et al 2012;Dołzbłasz 2013;Marot 2013). Theoretically, the changing role of borders is a major driver of regional processes (Bufon 2013), partly in connection with deagrarianization, urban-suburban development (Čede et al 2018; Viñas 2019), depopulation and deprivation (Damyanovic, Reinwald 2014;Josipovič 2014;Fischer, Born 2018;Vaishar et al 2020). The border region of this study also illustrates the numerous changes to the border in the functional and symbolic sense (Martinez 1994;Bufon 2013; Sendhardt 2013).…”