Over a Quarter of Austrians Have Migration Background, Official Data Reveal

According to the authority, the share of the population with such a background had surged by 430,000 or 24 per cent in the last seven years, compared to 2015 when people from these categories represented 1.81 million of the total Austrian population, AtoZSerwisPlus.com reports.

“Austria’s population is growing solely through immigration; without it, the number of inhabitants would be down. The population forecast will fall back to the level of the 1950s in the long term. Since 2015, the proportion of the population with a migration background has risen steadily from 21.4 per cent to 25.4 per cent,” Tobias Thomas, the Director of Statistics Austria, explained.

The head of Statistics Austria also pointed out that with an increasing population, the relations between migrants of different countries are improving, as they have reported positively on living together.

Out of 1.6 million foreigners living in Austria as of April 2022, the main country of origin is Germany, with 217,000 nationals representing 13.2 per cent of the total non-Austrian population. Romanians and Serbs follow the list, with 138,000 and 122,000 nationals, respectively.

As Statistics Austria shows, there have been increases recorded in specific nationalities, for example, Ukrainians, as the number of those increased from 13,000 at the beginning of the year to almost 53,000 in April – marking a 307 per cent increase.

A jump in the number of nationalities was also noticed among Croatians, with the numbers being up by two per cent – from 95,297 to 97,676, Syrians with a 3.7 per cent increase (from 68,358 to 70,901) and Bulgarians increasing from 35,879 at the beginning of the year to 36,335, represented with a 1.2 per cent increase. In addition, the number of Russian nationals has also increased by 1.3 per cent, surging from 33,926 to 34,392 in a four-month period.

The increase in Ukrainian and Russian nationals living in Austria can be directly linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started on February 24, corresponding with the increase recorded in the last four months.

Although the non-Austrian population is increasing in the country, this hasn’t always been the case, as those numbers were considerably low for some nationalities.

One that stands out the most is the share of Romanian nationals, which has increased by 91.4 per cent from 2015 to 2022 – accounting for 67,080 more Romanians in Austria.

As per their integration, people born in Austria and those from other nationalities don’t seem to have frequent contact, as a survey by Statistics Austria shows. More specifically, 46 per cent of those born in Austria estimated their daily contact and living together as “very good” or “fairly good”, while the figure was only 29 per cent for people with infrequent or no contact.

Furthermore, about 49 per cent of those born in Austria said they use social media on a daily basis, with this percentage being higher for those born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Turkey (63 per cent) or those born in Afghanistan, Syria or Russia (76 per cent).