According to new survey

Muslims: discrimination very high in Austria

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(Bild: APA/dpa/Andreas Gebert)

Muslims in Austria subjectively experience the most discrimination among European countries with a large Muslim population. This is the result of a study conducted by the European Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) in 2021-22 and now published. 

According to the study, 66% of people in Austria had experienced discrimination within one year; the five-year average was 74%. This is the highest figure among the 13 EU countries surveyed.

Overall, respondents from sub-Saharan Africa were the most likely to have experienced some form of discrimination in the past twelve months, at 80 percent. Muslims from Syria and Turkey were practically on a par in this respect, with 64 and 65 percent respectively.

Problems finding accommodation
In Germany, Denmark and Italy, the group from sub-Saharan Africa also experienced more discrimination than others; in Belgium and France, however, they were practically on a par with North Africans, and in France even just below them.

In the five-year average, Austria was just as likely to experience discrimination when looking for accommodation (61 percent) as in the workplace (52 percent) or in contact with the healthcare system (45 percent). Among the reasons for discrimination, the topics of migration background, religion and skin color dominated across Europe, with skin color being mentioned most frequently for people from sub-Saharan Africa and migration background for the other groups. However, 52 percent of respondents stated two or more reasons for discrimination.

Young Muslims feel particularly discriminated against
Across Europe, younger respondents tended to report experiencing discrimination more frequently than older respondents. In Austria, however, this phenomenon of variation by age group was hardly pronounced and generally high at around 65 percent. Descendants of immigrants reported experiences of discrimination significantly more frequently than the first generation of immigrants.

About the survey

The groups surveyed came from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Syria and Turkey; for Austria, the responses of respondents from Syria, Turkey and sub-Saharan Africa were taken into account.

Cases are not reported
Although the level of discrimination experienced by Muslims in Austria is apparently so high, together with Italy it was one of the countries where cases of discrimination were reported least frequently by respondents (3 percent). This is despite the fact that knowledge of the existence of legal protection and human rights organizations that would help in such cases was relatively high at 32 percent.

The FRA study is the partial result of a more comprehensive survey of immigrants and descendants from Africa and the Eastern non-European Mediterranean region, which was conducted from 2021 to 2022. This study on Muslims' experiences of discrimination analyzes the responses of around 9600 people from the 13 EU countries Austria, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg and Greece.