Leaking panic as policy: Bordering,scaling,and forming in Austrian distributive politics

Abstract

The article argues for a theoretical vocabulary to analyse how processes of demarcation and exclusion can be accompanied by a language of sharing. The article analyses how neo-nationalist and white supremacist exclusions in Austria were often justified by political panics about ‘leaking’. Leaking panic is a trope in which presumably hideous Others siphon resources from an imagined ‘us’, used for proposing targeted attacks at ‘them’ to secure warm and communal sharing among that imagined ‘us’. I bring this observation to a discussion of recent work in economic anthropology on sharing and its promise for transnational distribution. To theorise how imaginaries of sharing rest on constructions of the community of sharing and distribution, I propose to add bordering, scaling, and forming as auxiliary concepts. I take these theoretical instruments to investigate the cutting of welfare benefits for the children of transnational labourers in the name of ‘fairness for Austrian families’ and the protection of private foundations to defend them from foreign capital through the affectionate language of ‘Austrian family enterprises’. The discussion reveals the importance of understanding demarcation and categorisation to legitimise exclusions by rhetorics of sharing.