HEATED DEBATES

Helfried Carl in conversation with Judith Kohlenberger and Michael Soder

HEATED DEBATES
Migration panic and climate crisis

When it comes to migration and the climate, it never takes long for the next debate to break out. Ideas turn into accusations, discussions into endless trench warfare. In the end, all that often remains is a lack of clarity as to how social goals can be achieved.

In their latest books „Migrationspanik“ and „Hitzige Debatten“, renowned migration researcher Judith Kohlenberger and socio-economist Michael Soder analyse the current developments in a discourse that seems to be leading to an incipient and, in parts, already completed authoritarian turn that has also taken hold of the middle-class milieu. And both show how society and politics can refocus on the essentials.

Judith Kohlenberger heads the Research Institute for Migration and Refugee Research and Management (FORM) at WU Vienna, is a senior researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip) and is associated with the Jacques Delors Centre and the Einstein Center Digital Future in Berlin. Her work has been honoured with the Kurt Rothschild Prize and the Anas Shakfeh Prize for services to human rights, democracy and the promotion of the rule of law. She is a member of the Integration Council of the City of Vienna and co-editor of the Journal for flight and refugee research. Your book The escape paradox (2022) was Austrian Science Book of the Year 2023 and nominated for the German Non-Fiction Prize.

Michael Soder studied economics, social sciences and socio-economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and completed his doctorate on the political economy of socio-ecological transformation. He currently works in the economic policy department of the Vienna Chamber of Labour on the topics of green structural change, green industrial policy, shaping a just transition and research, innovation and technology. He also teaches at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, the University of Applied Sciences Campus Vienna and the University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna.

Moderation
Helfried Carl, Austrian diplomat; Austrian Ambassador to Slovakia from 2014 to 2019 and former Head of Office of National Council President Barbara Prammer; since 2019 partner of the Innovation in Politics Institute in Vienna, which he co-founded, and founder of the European Capital of Democracy initiative. Carl is a board member of the Bruno Kreisky Forum and the Austrian Society for European Politics ÖGFE.

Judith Kohlenberger:
Migration panic. How isolationist policies are fuelling the authoritarian turn.
Picus Verlag, September 2025, 22,- €

Michael Soder:
Heated debates. How the climate dispute is dividing our society and what we can do about it.
ÖGB Verlag, October 2025, 24,90