New Endowed Professor for Migration Research

The St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences was awarded the “Endowed Professorship for Migration, Internal Border Regimes, and Bureaucracy“ by the province of Lower Austria. The professorship is dedicated to bureaucratic practices pertaining to the access of migrants to the healthcare and social welfare system. Cultural anthropologist and ethnologist Gilles Reckinger took over the professorship-

The endowed professorship promotes research and teaching at the interface of migration, internal border regimes, and bureaucracy. By focussing on the public healthcare system and other social welfare administration as places of drawing internal borders, it strives to explore how the implementation of healthcare and social welfare policy works in bureaucratic practice and to identify which borders are “erected” for migrants as a result.

Cultural anthropologist and ethnologist Gilles Reckinger started his professorship at the St. Pölten UAS in December. Since 2020 he had been active in teaching and research at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Graz as a private lecturer. From 2018 to 2023, he was a rector and academic director of the Institut Supérieur de l'Economie in Luxembourg and before that he was a professor for intercultural communication and risk research at the University of Innsbruck and an Otto von Freising Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Eichstätt in Germany. Reckinger studied Cultural Anthropology / European Ethnology and Sociology in Graz, Genf, Quebec and Montreal and earned his PhD in 2009 in Graz within the framework of a DOC-team fellowship by the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Enhancing the Research Location

“This professorship is already the second endowed professorship to be awarded by the province of Lower Austria to the St. Pölten UAS. This demonstrates the strength of our institutes’ research, which substantially contribute to innovation and the development of St. Pölten and Lower Austria as a research location”, emphasises UAS Executive Director Hannes Raffaseder.

“I am glad that we can welcome Gilles Reckinger as a renowned international expert in the field of migration research to our faculty staff. We wish him all the best for his start and look forward to engaging in successful collaboration”, says Johannes Pflegerl, head of the Ilse Artl Institute for Social Inclusion Research of the St. Pölten UAS that accommodates the professorship. 

“Thanks to the genuinely transdisciplinary orientation of the researchers here at the UAS and the research group we will establish, I expect us to make innovative contributions to empirical research in this highly relevant field, which is so closely linked to this professorship. We will focus particularly on the transfer of scientifically generated knowledge to the practical realm and the wider public”, rejoices newly appointed endowed professor Gilles Reckinger.

Internal Administrative Border Regimes

The endowed professor will analyse border regimes which exist within a country. National states increasingly regulate migration through social policy. Making social rights hierarchical has exacerbated the precarious inclusion of migrants.

“Inequality generates negative effects on economic growth, health, wellbeing and social cohesion. This endowed professorship seeks to make these consequences visible and demonstrate practical solutions for pressing social challenges. This is in line with the strategy for research, technology and innovation by the province of Lower Austria with the close connection between research and society at its centre”, says Pflegerl.

By focussing on the role of documents, papers, and social work in erecting administrative borders, the professorship will tackle topics which have not been researched much in the past.

Close and International Collaboration with Historians

The close collaboration with historians guarantees that research content is put in a historical context. A link that has not been sufficiently established so far. The goal is to create an internationally successful research group at the St. Pölten UAS’ Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Inclusion Research. The research group will be active in the European University E2UDRES3, which is coordinated by the St. Pölten UAS, and the Research Network for Interdisciplinary Regional Studies (first), a network that the St. Pölten UAS has been involved in for many years.

This international positioning allows the UAS to continue research beyond the runtime of the endowed professorship. It unlocks innovative potential for future teaching by initiating critical reflection on the social workers’ professional self-perception.

The province of Lower Austria funds the endowed professorship through the Gesellschaft für Forschungsförderung NÖ (GFF).

• Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Inclusion Research
• Endowed Professorships of the Province of Lower Austria

From left to right.: Johannes Pflegerl (head of the St. Pölten UAS‘ Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Inclusion Research), Katharina Auer-Voigtländer (head of the St. Pölten UAS‘ Department of Social Sciences), Gilles Reckinger, UAS Executive Director Hannes Raffaseder