Welcome to Austria, I guess. On a positive note, I can assure you that austrians tend to discriminate against anyone not from Austria. Source: A bunch of anecdotes from people in my peer group (germans) who studied or worked in Austria.

There is a two dimensional racist dynamic in Europe. As you go East and South you are considered less European/“White” by the people North/West-wards.

probably propaganda perpetrated by RUSSIA too, since they also use it to spread “anti-immigration” message to the conservatives in europe.

What I’ve heard from my conservative and far right coworkers is that Ukrainians are leeching. Especially since they got (get?) more money than other immigrants here in Germany if they still depend on the states money.

And those coworkers hate on all immigrants getting money constantly…

I guess their disdain for Ukrainians is not about culture and behaviour like it is with African and Arab immigrants but about the money.

Of course Russian and far right propaganda pushes that narrative to the front and the compassionate narrative back.

But still I think what you experience is a fraction of what African and Arab immigrants have to endure.

I’m sorry. I wish people where more compassionate and less propagandised.

Crazy, the amount of discussion this questions generates. Nice!

Lots of people are diving into history for this one - I think the answer is much more simple (and stupid).

The people are racist against whomever because they are told to be. Living standards are declining across all western civilizations (fastest in US and UK) due to a staggering rise in inequality.

Now we can’t have the populace going for the uberrich, so we need scape goats. And those are: foreigners, the poor and the sick. The media tells them to hate these people; and so they do. It’s as simple as that.

All the former eastern block countries (including east Germany, also Yugoslavia) are stereotyped as poor, which carries further stereotypes of criminality, stupidity and general backwardness. There are old German jokes about how poles will steal your car for example.

I would say that its slowly getting better as the economic situation of our direct neighbours improves, but that may well be my bubble, wich is mostly made up of university students. Far right parties are on the rise and I doubt their voters have very nuanced views about any foreigners

For example, Ukrainians are very often pushed toward jobs like elderly care, as if that’s all we are fit for. Meanwhile, most Ukrainians I know who are now doing hard physical work here actually have higher education. Back in Ukraine they were lawyers, business owners, doctors.

This part is less because of ethnic chauvinism and more because that’s what most of the richer EU countries are short on, plus foreign qualifications just aren’t accepted as-is even if you were French or Swedish, and I’d say that knowing the local language to a high level is rather important for lawyering and doctoring. Business owners, that’s just how these countries work - I’m a native German who is poor, no one ever pushed me to be a business owner. Countries like Germany should definitely make it less of a pain in the ass to convert foreign qualifications into locally accepted qualifications, though.

I’m genuinely trying to understand why this happens. Why are we treated this way? Is it because Eastern Europe is seen as less economically developed?

Yeah, people from richer EU countries are kinda snooty about being economically developed and whatnot, and genuinely ignorant. People from East Germany were/are treated similarly by West Germans when the GDR collapsed and Germany reunited.

Also, sadly many people in richer EU countries are far right or even the pro-Putin kind of leftist. If they had their way, they’d send you right back and stop supporting Ukraine completely.

As I’m not a victim of this behaviour and don’t share those views please treat this more as educated speculation then anything else.

I see three factors coming together in general towards Eastern countries:

Back in the 60s up until the 80s at least in western Germany there was a huge amount of traveling workers from all eastern countries - mainly turkey for the area I’ve grown up in but from what I know it was not that country specific.

Those workers were very focused in the construction industry in the beginning and then spread out to other physical labor intensive topics.

The “link” between physical work and a lack of intelligence dates back even way further, “go to University or you have to become a construction worker” stuff. I’ve seen texts in that direction from the Weimar Republic but I guess it’s way older.

Those two combined have anchored te link Eastern European == Construction Workers == Dumb.

That’s a stupid chain but I’ve seen it IRL.

And then there is the general “foreign is evil and weird” that seems to be ingrained so deep in German and Austrian culture it’s sad. For some reason everything (food, people, behaviours) that are not familiar or “wrong” until proven otherwise often enough. This tendency makes easy targets out of everyone foreign - and if you look even slightly different that’s good enough.

All of that said I’ve never seen or heard Ukraine specific things - but this is more saying about my bubble than that doesn’t exist I assume.

It’s not just Ukrainians, all eastern Europeans are treated like this.

There is a cultural meme in Western Europe, that dates back to antiquity: West = Good, East = Bad. The West aka “us” - originally the Roman Empire, later through the ages the Franks, the French, the Germanic Tribes after their integration into the Western culture - are the good guys, of course. In the East are the bad guys - the Germanic Tribes before they were integrated, the Sassanid Empire, the Huns, the Awares, the Magyars, the Mongols, the Turks, the Soviets. Western Europe was invaded by people from “The East” basically every couple of generations for almost two millenia. This meme is still pretty alive - just look at the moral geography of Tolkien (who adds South = Bad and North = Used to be Good from an Anglo-Saxon perspective).

Another meme, or rather deeply rooted prejudice is that Slavs are uncivilized. This one is not as old, but dates back to the Middle Ages. When Germanic and Slavic cultures started to clash in the Middle Ages, the Germanic people had absorbed and revived a lot of the antique Roman culture. This lead to a complete Germanification of all Western Slavic tribes between Elbe and Odra. Later Poland was subdued by Prussia (and Russia and Austria) for centuries. In the south, Bohemians and Moravians were partially Germanized, too (Prague has been the capital of the German Empire for quite al long time, and the oldest German university is in Prague). For centuries, German was the language of culture, commerce and administration in almost the entire region inhabited by Western Slavs. When Germans encountered Slavs identifyable as Slavs by their accent or their language, most of them would be be peasants or poor people. Hence Slavic = poor and uncivilized. It was only in 1918 that the Western Slavic people got their freedom from Germanic (i.e. Prussian and Austrian) dominance. During the 20^th century, Fascism and the Iron Curtain did not help to mend these old deep-rooted prejudice, though.

I’m sorry we have not been able to break this prejudices, and ashamed that they are on the rise since a couple of years

I don’t know if this is worth to be noted but currently it seems to be generally hard to find a job no matter the education.

“Still” - it will never change. The entire point of national identity is to keep people divided. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_conquer

I think that on a personal level it comes from having to rationalize prosperity in the West. The resources come from unfair trades that can’t be acknowledged directly or we would have to accept that these are still colonial structures. So it’s national cleverness that sets nations apart. After all, each country can study science and engineering.

Online and in the news there is a lot of sympathy for Ukrainians. In real life, however, we are often treated as if we were mentally backward natives.

1. Remember the Kurds. The people who push the positive news can take it away.

2. Look how you have the same prejudices. Other natives have the same potential as Ukrainians.

Look how much some citizens want their country to be part of central Europe. Those prejudices are not limited to Austria.

Let me explain. There are multiple factors why Eastern Europeans are looked down upon and underestimated by Western Europeans. Biggest factors are the second world war and the Soviet Union and ignorance. Let’s also be honest, rich countries like to think they are better by virtue of being rich. From what I remember Ukraine was also seen by the Soviets as farmland. If I’m not mistaken, Russia still thinks that Ukrainian is just poor, farmer Russian.

A lof of this has to do with history. Germany used to be a big kingdom and had a large neighbour, the Austro-Hungarian empire. The French also had a large empire, many colonies from which they extracted wealth and exacted inhumanity upon. They were only second to the United Kingdom which owned a large chunk of world in the 20th century. Spain and Portugal were smaller players despite their humungous impact on South America. The first and second world war allowed Eastern European countries to gain independence, only to be invaded again and taken over by Russia which became the Soviet Union. Due to this, they had to rebuild from less and had less time as independent nations.

While Eastern Europeans were either under foreign rule, rebuilding, or fighting each other (Balkans are a good example), Western Europe was pulling away in nearly all ways. Most Eastern European countries were mostly agrarian, not industrial, had fewer highly educated people, and recovering from the yoke of the Soviets. Even in Germany, some 35 years after unification and the fall of the Soviet Union, people do not understand the value of democracy. Eastern Germany has the biggest support for the new Nazi party. There are maps of Germany showing the differences: wages are lower, education levels are lower, cities are smaller, religion is more wide-spread, and so on. One famous map of Germany is that of incandescent light bulb usage. Western Germany had moved on to LEDs and Eastern Germany was still buying up incandescent stock.

Eastern Europe still is behind Western Europe on many, many things. Human rights, expenditure, press freedom, democratic values, types of corruption (Western countries are corrupt af, it’s just called lobbying and not a visible to the common folk), environmental protection, air quality, expendable income, separation of church and state, alcohol consumption, etc. Videos of anti-queer protests, anti-abortion protests, pro-Russia protests and so on, do no help the image. Migration also still mostly happens from East to West, not the other way around.

I remember talking to Polish people and they were making jokes of Ukrainians. “Did you know that Ukrainian men live 10 years less on average than Ukrainian women? Do you know why? One word, vodka.” Poles aren’t shy about their drinking habits, but they were tipping their hats to Ukrainians.

So, Western Europeans, especially those who have never been to Eastern Europe have prejudices. I’m not saying they’re right to have them, just giving an explanation of why. We are all human and I’ve met some wonderful Ukrainians, some wonderful Russians, and I’ve met some asshole Ukrainians and some asshole Russians.

I wish you good luck in Germany.

I believe it’s because fear of the unknown is a strong human instinct. Also, it doesn’t help that people clawing for power knows the oldest trick in the book for gathering support is to exploit it by blaming something (or someone) less known for any prominent problem

I’m sorry this is happening to you

Great question! Yes, it’s from ignorance. Older Europeans still live in the “behind the iron curtain” mentality where we “know” everything’s underdeveloped with an oppressed and ignorant populace. For some countries this has started to change, but I’m sure even Poles can attest to it still being the case.

The average knowledge on the difference between Belarus - Russia - Ukraine has increased a lot since 2022, but in 2020 I was asked by my CEO to create a new development office and I realized most people in the company had no idea what the difference was between the top two choices Belarus vs Poland (I went with Poland).

Sincere apologies for our ignorance.

/Swede, who housed a Ukrainian refugee family for a year before they went back. The mother was in IT but could not get any jobs in Sweden although she tried really hard. The daughter immediately excelled in school and found it to be at a way easier level than school in Ukraine.