Abstract
The political development of the European Union with its eastward expansion of its borders has reinforced Austria’s position as the geographic centre of Europe. Austria’s territory is composed of forests (43%), land devoted to agriculture (34%) and the Alps (10%). A significant part of Austria is rural or semi-urbanised, including the alpine regions in the west and hills towards the eastern borders with Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. About two-fifth of the land space is “urbanised” with Vienna (population larger than 1 million) as the only metropolitan area. Five cities fall into the population category of 75,000 to 250,000 inhabitants, and 18 towns have a population between 20,000 and 75,000. Further, 49 towns have a population between 10,000 and 20,000, and all other towns are smaller. Austria has a population of 8.175 million inhabitants (2004). Ninety-eight per cent of the population speaks German, and there are six officially recognised cultural minority groups (Croatians, Roma, Slovaks, Slovenians, Czechs and Hungarians) who mainly live in the southern and eastern regions. Approximately three-fourth of the population is RomanCatholic, 5% are Protestant and 21% are otherwise religiously affiliated or have no religious affiliation. With regard to employment, Austria appears to be pretty “average” for western European standards (6.4%).
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Notes
- 1.
In the analysis of the sample-data “migration background” was defined as “born in South-East-Europe, Asia, Africa or South America, or at least one parent born there”. This definition is based on the idea of lower socio-economic status and therefore does not consider migrants from North- and West Europe and Anglo-American countries.
- 2.
This measure corresponds with the measures of gang involvement used in the Euro-Gang Study.
- 3.
No tests of statistical significance were conducted, so the presented differences should be interpreted to be merely suggestive of differences.
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Stummvoll, G.P., Kromer, I., Hager, I. (2010). Austria. In: Junger-Tas, J., Marshall, I., Enzmann, D., Killias, M., Steketee, M., Gruszczynska, B. (eds) Juvenile Delinquency in Europe and Beyond. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-95982-5_7
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