What happens when the factory stays but the workers change?

2025 August 01

PREMIUM_EU researcher Claudius Ströhle brings new perspectives on migration from Turkey to rural Austria at Lower Austrian symposium on industry and the countryside.

At a symposium exploring 80 years of industrial life in rural Austria, cultural anthropologist Dr. Claudius Ströhle posed a timely and provocative question: What happens when villages don’t just lose industry but change through the people who stay?

Ströhle, based at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, presented findings from PREMIUM_EU’s Austrian case study at the 43rd Symposium of the Lower Austrian Institute for Regional Studies in Wolkersdorf. His talk titled “The village is ideal for people with a migration background - arriving, excluding, and growing up in rural Austria” examined the long-term social impact of migration from Turkey to two economically vulnerable regions: eastern Upper Styria and Upper Carinthia.

While the symposium focused largely on how rural industry shaped local communities over the decades, Ströhle flipped the lens to show how migration has also quietly but profoundly reshaped rural life.

Drawing on 26 qualitative interviews with migrants from Turkey, their descendants, and local policy experts, his research offers a rare glimpse into the inter-generational experience of migrant families in Austria’s countryside.

Two key questions stood out:

What motivates migrants from Turkey to settle in economically declining rural regions and what are their experiences of arrival, work, and belonging? Despite broader patterns of emigration and recession, the regions studied have retained or even grown their Turkey-origin populations. Ströhle’s findings highlight how migrants navigate life in small towns and villages, contributing to local economies and communities over time.

How do second-generation migrants describe growing up in these villages? What futures do they envision for the places they call home? The children of migrants shared intergenerational perspectives on inclusion, identity, and local development. Their reflections offer important insights into how rural areas can evolve socially and culturally in the context of migration.

Ströhle’s approach is deeply ethnographic, shaped by his background in European Ethnology and past research on remittances between Austria and Turkey. His work with PREMIUM_EU brings nuance and personal narrative to the larger policy puzzle of mobility and regional development.

As European regions grapple with population loss and shifting labour markets, the PREMIUM_EU project, funded by Horizon Europe, seeks to understand how mobility can be harnessed as a resource, not a threat. Ströhle’s contribution makes clear that the answers lie not only in economic forecasts or infrastructure, but in how people live, grow up, and imagine their place in the village.

And as Austria reconsiders the future of its rural areas, perhaps it’s not just about whether the factory survives but whether those who work in and around it feel they belong.