An enquiry into the importance of the perceived positional, moral and emotional recognition for social integration in Austria

Considering the social disintegration approach of Wilhelm Heitmeyer and colleagues, this contribution explores three different dimensions of perceived recognition—positional, moral, and emotional recognition—among the Austrian population. The main purpose is to identify social groups that do not feel recognized and thus could be affected by social disintegration. The analysis is based on data from the Austrian Social Survey (SSÖ), a random 2018 sample of 1200 respondents that is representative of the population aged 18 and above. Based on an explorative latent class analysis, we are able to identify four distinct groups: poorly recognized, emotionally unrecognized, positionally unrecognized, and entirely recognized. Our contribution shows that the latter is the largest group in Austria, even though this group of almost entirely recognized respondents is not convinced that they have an impact on Austrian politics.