The identity strategies of undocumented migrants in Austria

Abstract

Undocumented migrants are rarely listened to. They seem to be the object of a discourse that focuses predominantly on the impacts of the so called illegal migration on sending and receiving countries: policy options, asylum systems, governance, migration control, etcetera. In this article, I argue from an ethnological perspective with an emphasis on undocumented migrants' identity strategies. The representations of cultural and ethnical identities, which are represented to create a distance to the unattractive illegal status, are of specific concern. I show the migrants views on what it feels like to be illegal, how this legal categorization affects their identity constructions and which consequences an inclusion of their voices and views would have on policy options.