The racialization of welfare support as means to further welfare state cutbacks – spillover effects in survey populations and media reports in Austria.

The spillover of racism towards welfare opinions has previously been studied in several countries. This paper analyses how racism and welfare are formed intertwined in Austria. This remains an important topic, as the welfare state not only distributes material resources but is also seen as a site of socialization – at least within the German-speaking literature. Besides identifying a potential spillover effect within survey data for Austria, the article also discusses how the topics of the racialized, especially in the form of the migrant "other" and welfare state and support, are rhetorically linked within newspaper articles. Four rhetorical strategies are distinguished within the empirical material using the notion of the undeserving "other" to argue, among others, for general welfare state cutbacks. These strategies also introduce arguments for extreme cases of social exclusion within the welfare state that affect existing views on, and possibly also, society and social life itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]