Vienna ‘Easy City’? Functional Aspects of Quality of Life
摘要
This chapter shows the results of an ethnography with 16 migrant-origin families from Hungary and Italy living in Vienna, starting from the analysis of the multiple factors influencing migration choices and from parental representations of Vienna and of the places of provenance. I reflect on ‘urban care’ and on the adaptive character of preferences as the result of biographical learning processes boosted by migration and the Covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, I empirically formulate the concept of ‘easy city’ and question it in the light of the privileged position of the research participants in terms of cultural capital and of learning to learn competence. I further relativize the perception of the city as easy to use by highlighting the importance of one’s neighborhood of residence and of the capability ‘motility’. Considering the results about migration decision-making, I argue that gender inequalities in career opportunities are also due to the difficulties for women, especially in migration, in conciliating childcare with socially recognized learning. After giving an overview of the list of capabilities and conversion factors produced prevalently inductively, I explore being autonomous referred to children, and conciliating work, care, and time for oneself referred to the parents and especially to mothers.