Asylum country Austria

Back to: History and Background of Migration in Austria

After 1945 Austria became one of the most important transit countries for refugees, especially from Eastern Europe. Between 1945 and 1990 about 650,000 people reached the West via Austria. Refugee policy and the claim to be an asylum country became basic principles of Austria’s self-image. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, approximately 1.4 million foreigners lived in Austria, including more than half a million displaced persons, liberated concentration camp prisoners and forced labourers, Jewish refugees, former prisoners of war and members of allies of the German army, most of whom were soon sent to the emigration countries of the USA, Canada or Australia or were forcibly repatriated.

In addition there were more than 300,000 German-speaking expellees – so-called „Volksdeutsche“ – from Central and Eastern Europe. There is no reliable data on how many of these people actually stayed in Austria; in 1948 their number was at least about half a million.

In the following decades, Austria became an important destination for political refugees as a result of political crises in Communist Eastern Europe and its geographical location. In 1956/57, more than 180,000 Hungarian refugees arrived in Austria after the suppression of the Hungarian popular uprising. For the majority of them, Austria was primarily a transit country; about 20,000 Hungarians settled permanently in the country.

After the violent end of the „Prague Spring“ in the summer of 1968, about 162,000 Czechs and Slovaks fled to Austria. A large number later returned to their homelands, the rest mostly emigrated to other countries. It is estimated that about 12,000 Czechoslovak citizens remained permanently in Austria.

After the imposition of martial law in Poland and the suppression of the Solidarnosc movement in 1981 and 1982, more than 120,000 Poles came to Austria; the majority of these refugees also used Austria as a corridor to emigrate from here to the USA, Canada or Australia.

In this context, it is worth mentioning the approximately 1,000 Chilean refugees who found refuge in Austria after the military coup of 11 September 1973 and the approximately 300,000 Jews from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who emigrated primarily to Israel and the USA via Austria between 1968 and 1986.

The latest (and biggest) influx of refugees happened in 1992 when during the war in post-Yugoslavia approximately 90.000 refugees from Bosnia-Herzegowina came to Austria. Contrary to the other groups that saw Austria rather as a transit country, most of them stayed in Austria.