Research Project | Good Living and Climate Protection?! – Opportunities and Barriers to Sustainable Living for Precarious Migrant Women in Vienna

Project Description

The research project “Good Living and Climate Protection” investigates subjective perspectives on sustainable and good living among precarious migrant women in Vienna. The project focuses on knowledge, knowledge gaps, and routines relating to sustainability among the women concerned. In addition, it explores visions for a sustainable Vienna, as well as obstacles and enabling conditions.

Methodology and Implementation

The project is implemented based on a two-part participatory workshop concept, in which the question of sustainability in the women’s everyday lives is explored. The workshops aim both to empower and expand sustainable everyday practices among precarious migrant women in Vienna, and to investigate how sustainability is experienced and enacted in their daily lives.

Three workshops of three hours each, with 8–10 participants per workshop, are planned. The outputs of the workshops include statements and posters on sustainability and sustainable routines, group discussions with the women about sustainable everyday routines that are implemented or not implemented in Vienna (with a focus on opportunities and obstacles), and collages envisioning a sustainable Vienna in the future.

Analysis and Dissemination

The collected materials will be analysed using Grounded Theory. Based on this, recommendations for promoting sustainable everyday practices among precarious migrant women in Vienna will be developed, which may also be relevant for other educationally disadvantaged and poverty-prone groups.

Three strategies are envisaged for dissemination:

  • A public exhibition involving the workshop participants.

  • A presentation of results to representatives of the City of Vienna, to make the findings directly usable for the development and evaluation of relevant measures.

  • A scientific publication, to contribute the insights to the academic discourse on socio-ecological transformation processes.

Project team

Method

The project is implemented on the basis of a two-part participatory workshop concept, during which qualitative empirical data will be collected. The workshops are conducted in plain language.

  • The Phase 1 workshops focus on the current subjective perspectives of precarious migrant women in Vienna regarding sustainable everyday practices. In addition, climate protection-related knowledge for everyday life is conveyed.
  • The Phase 2 workshops focus on the women’s future perspectives on a sustainable Vienna.

The materials collected (individual statements, posters, transcribed group discussions, and collages) will be analysed using Grounded Theory (Breuer, 2010). Two rounds of analysis are interlinked in a circular manner, with the aim of incorporating knowledge gained from the first phase of data collection into the second round of workshops.

Research question(s) and hypotheses

The project addresses the following research questions:

  1. How do precarious migrant women in Vienna experience sustainability in their everyday lives?
    a) What subjective meanings does sustainability hold for them?
    b) What knowledge, knowledge gaps, and routines exist?

  2. How can sustainable everyday practices among precarious migrant women be promoted and empowered?
    a) How do they envision a sustainable Vienna in the future?
    b) Which enabling conditions and barriers can be identified?

Scientific and practical relevance

As ecological, social, and economic crises are closely intertwined, they can only be addressed within the framework of socio-ecological transformation processes (Altvater, 2009; Brand, 2009; Christ & Sommer, 2022).

This interconnectedness also applies to everyday life: since a good life involves, alongside economic, social, and political aspects, a healthy environment as well as physical and mental wellbeing (in line with the sustainability triangle, Kropp, 2019), climate-protective behaviour and quality of life in daily routines are closely linked (Awart, 2020).

Sustainable action is often associated with the lifestyle of a specific social milieu (intellectual middle class) (Probst, 2025), while other groups are overlooked or not addressed (Nies et al., 2014).

Migrant women play a particularly key role in Vienna: on the one hand, as a migrant group they are at a higher risk of poverty (Statistics Austria, 2024) and are therefore especially affected by the consequences of climate change (e.g., energy poverty, increased heat vulnerability) (APCC, 2023; BMK, 2024); on the other hand, as women they continue to be responsible for everyday routines in which climate-protective behaviours can be applied (shopping, cooking, repairing).

This is precisely where the project aims to intervene: it seeks to capture the subjective perspectives of migrant women on sustainable everyday practices, their visions for the future, and the obstacles they perceive. Through a participatory process, recommendations for promoting sustainable everyday practices among precarious migrant women in Vienna will be developed.

Funding body
  • Funding body: Stadt Wien, MA 7
  • Funding amount: 36 000 Euro

Project duration

1 April 2026 – 1 March 2027

If you are interested in this project, please contact katharina.hametner@sfu.ac.at.

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