Population politics in the fascist era : Austria's 1935 population index

Laws regulating immigration and citizenship in interwar Austria were part of a European trend of population politics in fascist and authoritarian states in the 1930s. A new proposal in 1935 for a population index, including identity cards for every person residing in Austria, was modelled on Italian legislation and signalled a shift towards totalitarian models of population management. While Austria’s population index system was never implemented before Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany in 1938, it corresponded nonetheless to a broader pattern of fascist and authoritarian population policy across Europe in the interwar era. Official and public debates about the proposed population index reveal the dual aims of Austrian policy and opinion makers: first, to facilitate greater surveillance of citizens and non-citizens; and second, to reduce the number of Jews in Austria either through restricting immigration or by precluding Jews already residing in Austria from being naturalised. This connection between racism, migration and citizenship in the Austrian case illustrates the convergence of different strands of population politics as fascist and authoritarian states attempt to forge new citizens. Moreover, the interwar Austrian case highlights the interplay between exclusionary practices of nationalism and citizenship and successive waves of mass migration during the twentieth century. My article places the Austrian case within these broader processes of citizenship and state building in early twentieth-century Europe, but parallels could also be drawn with other post-imperial or post-colonial states