Paper short abstract:

Former tourism infrastructures are the primary means of accommodating asylum seekers in Austria. This paper discusses the challenges both guests and hosts are facing in this accommodation in the absence of spatial guidelines for asylum seeker accommodation in Austria.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the accommodation of asylum seekers in former tourism infrastructures in Austria. It lays out why small-scale hotels and bed and breakfast establishments are predominantly used and illustrates the challenges both guests and hosts are facing in the absences of spatial guidelines for asylum seeker accommodation that acknowledge the needs of forcibly displaced people and facilitate a sense of arrival.

The persistence in using tourist accommodation as a place of refuge since the 1950s is a consequence of the over-supply of low-standard or unclassified tourist facilities in often remote parts of Austria as well as of the strategic advantages that the small-scale structure of the tourism industry provides for the Austrian asylum system.

Proprietors are both responsible for the operation of the accommodation and expected to care for people in need of protection with special (housing) needs. The process of transforming a tourism establishment into accommodation for asylum seekers does not require Austrian proprietors to show evidence of any special training in the provision of space and care for asylum seekers nor to employ qualified staff.

Further, there are no minimum standards for the accommodation of asylum seekers but only extremely vague guidelines to be followed by both provincial governments and proprietors. Far too often it is left to operators of accommodation to determine whether the space provided allows not only for physical but also psychological refuge and offers an environment with which the refugees can identify and in which they can rediscover the notion of living.