Establishing Distinctions: Unemployment versus Vagrancy in Austria from the Late Nineteenth Century to 1938

Abstract

SummaryThis paper deals with the making of vagrancy in the context of early state welfare policy. Vagrancy is neither understood as an anachronism nor as deviance or marginality. Rather, it raises central questions concerning social policy and the history of labour. Starting from the problems of definition in the context of contemporary transnational debates, I will then focus on the practical implementation of distinctions in Austria from the late nineteenth century to the Anschluss in 1938. Different practices of varying efficacy will be accounted for, starting with the first attempts to formalize unemployment emerging in the late nineteenth century, when, based on a new understanding of unemployment as an effect of the labour market, new forms of supporting and regulating those wayfarers in search of employment were established. Such practices also aimed at outlawing vagrancy, with consistent penalties under the law. In addition, vagrancy will be discussed with respect to changing political regimes. Focusing on the 1920s and 1930s, the paper analyses crime statistics and crime records, and last but not least, the perspective of those who were “on the tramp”.