  We construct effective field theories for superconductors, that are powerful
enough to describe low lying sub gap fermion modes localized to vortex cores,
and at the same time resemble topological field theories in that there are no
bulk degrees of freedom. This is achieved by a kinetic term for fermions that
is proportional to the vortex topological charge, and thus vanish in the bulk.
We study the case of a spin-less two-dimensional $p_x + ip_y$ superconductor in
some detail, and show that the the subgap fermionic spectrum in a single
vortex, including the zero mode, has the same features as those obtained from
microscopic models. We also show, that in the topological scaling limit our
theory becomes a bona fide topological field theory which retains the Majorana
modes at the vortex cores, and correctly describes the non-Abelian statistics
of such vortices.
