`We are Dealing with People Whose Origins One can Clearly Tell Just by Looking': Critical Discourse Analysis and the Study of Neo-Racism in Contemporary Austria

This article focuses on the discourse of neo-racism towards foreigners in Austria between 1989 and 1991. It summarizes the preliminary results of an ongoing interdisciplinary project, and offers illustrative examples of official discourse (politicians), newspaper texts and anonymous conversations on the street recorded during the Waldheim campaign of 1987 and the Viennese municipal election of 1991. The study suggests that the neo-racist discourse occasioned by the population migrations after the collapse of communist Eastern Europe not only targets the specific Eastern European ethnic outgroups, but is elastic enough to combine these prejudices with those against other existing traditional and functionally determined outgroups. In the example cited, prejudices against Jews, Turks and bicycle riders merge into a generic neo-racist discourse.