Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

VIENNA

Who are all the foreigners living in Vienna in 2023?

The Austrian capital's own numbers indicate that around a third of all people living in Vienna don’t have an Austrian passport – and that number is even higher in certain groups.

Published: 21 November 2023 15:32 CET

The Summer Night Concert in 2019 in the Schönbrunn Palace Park in Vienna.

Classical music at Schönnbrunn. Photo: C.Stadler/Bwag/Wikimedia Commons

Vienna’s integration monitor finds that 34 percent of the city’s residents aren’t Austrian.

Despite higher numbers of refugees from Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan and other places coming to Austria over the past decade, most of the people who’ve moved to Vienna since 2014 come from EU and EEA countries, or Switzerland.

The capital’s foreigners also tend to have higher education – with about 38 percent having completed a university degree. A further 25 percent have at least a high school diploma.

READ ALSO: Vienna ranked least friendly city in world for foreigners

The demographics of foreigners in Vienna also tend to skew younger – with about 45 percent of Vienna residents aged 25-44 not being Austrians. Overall, the capital has been getting younger over the years as it’s grown – with over two million residents now, with an average age of 41.

In 2023, around 39 percent of Viennese were born abroad – although this figure may also count Austrians born abroad or people who immigrated here and have since taken up Austrian citizenship.

Although most foreigners living in Vienna who’ve moved here since 2014 are EEA or Swiss nationals, the largest foreigner groups remain those of Serbian or Turkish origin. Germans are also a particularly well-represented group.

The integration report also sheds some light though on the work situations of many non-EU foreign residents. A total of 45 percent work socially disadvantageous working hours, such as evening, weekend, or overnight shifts.

REVEALED: How many foreigners have become Austrian so far in 2023

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

Could be wurst: Vienna sausage stands push for UN recognition

The owners of 15 stands in the Austrian capital have formed a lobbying group and applied last week to have the “Vienna sausage stand culture” inscribed as intangible cultural heritage by the UN agency.

“We want to create a kind of quality seal for Vienna sausage stands,” said 36-year-old Patrick Tondl, one of the association’s founders whose family owns Leo’s Wuerstelstand — Vienna’s oldest operating sausage stand.

“At the sausage stand, everyone is the same… No matter if you’re a top banker who earns hundreds of thousands of euros or if you have to scrape together the last euros to buy a sausage… You meet here, you can talk to everyone,” he adds.

High inflation driving consumers looking for affordable meals, plus a new wave of vendors with updated flavours, have helped keep the stands busy.

Tondl’s great-grandfather started their business in the late 1920s, pulling a cart behind him and selling sausages at night.

The family’s customers have included former chancellor Bruno Kreisky, recalls Vera Tondl, 67, who runs the shop together with her son Patrick.

Leo’s is one of about 180 sausage stands in Vienna today, out of a total of about 300 food stands, selling fast food at fixed locations and open until the early hours, according to the city’s economic chamber.

Whereas the number of stands has remained similar over the last decade, more than a third have changed from selling sausages to kebabs, pizza and noodles, a spokesman for the chamber told AFP.

‘Momentum’

But sausage stands have seen a “mini boom” in customer numbers recently, according to Patrick Tondl.

Many have been drawn back to the stands by high inflation, where a meal can be had for less than 10 euros ($11) with lower overheads than restaurants.

New stand operators have also brought a “bit of momentum”, said Tondl, bringing the likes of organic vegetarian sausages with kimchi.

Tourists are already drawn in droves.

“When you come to Austria, it’s what you want to try,” 28-year-old Australian tourist Sam Bowden told AFP.

The cultural legacy of Vienna’s sausages is far-reaching, including the use of the term “wiener” for sausages in the United States, which is believed to have derived from the German name for Vienna, Wien.

However Sebastian Hackenschmidt, who has published a photo book on the stands, said the legacy of the “Vienna phenomena” is more complex.

He says that for many in multicultural Vienna, the sausage stands hold little appeal — equally for the growing number of vegetarians — and their universal appeal is something of a “myth”.

“Vienna is a city in great flux… With the influx of people, cultural customs are also changing,” Hackenschmidt told AFP.

Some 40 percent of Vienna’s two million inhabitants were born outside the country, where the anti-immigrant far-right looks set to top September national polls for the first time.

Url copied to clipboard!