Within the European Union, an internal liberalisation of cross‐border labour mobility for EU citizens is currently being combined with the tightening of control and management efforts at the external borders. At the same time, attempts are being made to strategically select immigrants from new member states as well as from outside the EU who will be of economic value. In this paper we argue that by implementing such protectionist and selective immigration policy, the EU has come to resemble a gated community in which the bio‐political control and management of immigration is, to a large extent, the product of fear. Often fear manifests itself in terms of fear of losing material gain, eg the anxiety of losing economic welfare or public security. More often, however, this fear relates to the entrance of the immigrant, the stranger and is, as such, associated with a fear of losing a community's self‐defined identity. These perceived threats to a community's comfort lead to the politicisation of protection, whereby the terra incognita beyond the border is justifiably neglected due to the indifference and the intentional blindness shown to the outside. Hiding in a gated community in order to protect this comfort zone and trying to exclude outsiders, ‘Others’, from the community, is not only in vain since the desire for completion of the Self can never be fulfilled, but what remains still more troublesome, is that this tendency will sustain and reproduce global inequality and segregation, both in the material as well as symbolic sense.

In the literature on migrant networks, the constitutive role of employers and recruiting actors remains underexposed, despite a persistent economic demand for migrant labour which is cheap, readily available and easily dismissed. Aiming to further understand how the recruitment of migrant labour by employers is organised, this paper focuses on the example of international employment agencies (IEAs). It is argued that these agencies are currently the anchors of the circular labour migration between Poland and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, temporary staffing is a fully legal and common phenomenon, allowing agencies to transfer part of the Polish employment from the underground to a more visible presence. When viewed through the lens of geographical and work-organisation literature on the issue of labour flexibility, these migrant workers could be named migrant flexiworkers. Apart from analysing the origins and current functioning of the IEAs, the paper discusses their development prospects and other more normative aspects of migrant flexiwork.

ABSTRACT. Closely following timely developments with regard to the European unification process, this paper focuses on recent migration policies taken with regard to labour immigrants from new EU member states. In the course of the May 2004 enlargement round, many 'old' member states decided to either delay free movement with a number of years or restrict it by limiting labour market access. It is argued that these policies are deeply grounded in 'fear'; fear of mass migration as such, as well as fear of the immigrants' impact on domestic employment, housing markets and social welfare systems. To this purpose, the paper starts with the elaboration of a theoretical framework around the concept of 'moral panic', drawn from the sociology of deviance, which is embedded in literature on boundary drawing and socio-spatial exclusion of immigrants as unwanted 'strangers'. By means of a narrative analysis of the free movement policy issue as it has unfolded in the Netherlands, it is subsequently demonstrated that 'fear of mass migration' has indeed played an important role in the 'bordering' of immigrant workers from new member states. Where appropriate, the narrative's results are placed within a wider context of migration and EU enlargement.

PurposeThis paper analyses how neighbourhood governance of social care affects the scope for frontline workers to address health inequities of older ethnic minorities. We critically discuss how an area-based, generic approach to service provision limits and enables frontline workers' efforts to reach out to ethnic minority elders, using a relational approach to place. This approach emphasises social and cultural distances to social care and understands efforts to bridge these distances as “relational work”.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a two-year multiple case study of the cities of Nijmegen and The Hague, the Netherlands, following the development of policies and practices relevant to ethnic minority elders. They conducted 44 semi-structured interviews with managers, policy officers and frontline workers as well as 295 h of participant observation at network events and meeting activities.FindingsRelational work was open-ended and consisted of a continuous reorientation of goals and means. In some cases, frontline workers spanned neighbourhood boundaries to connect with professional networks, key figures and places meaningful to ethnic minority elders. While neighbourhood governance is attuned to equality, relational work practice fosters possibilities for achieving equity.Research limitations/implicationsFurther research on achieving equity in relational work practice and more explicit policy support of relational work is needed.Originality/valueThe paper contributes empirical knowledge about how neighbourhood governance of social care affects ethnic minority elders. It translates a relational view of place into a “situational” social justice approach.

The debate on the financial crisis is at an impasse. Neoliberal austerity discourse is often positioned as an almost insurmountable barrier, its disciplinary power affecting even the most change‐oriented citizen‐initiatives existing today. Countering this, this paper highlights the transformative capacity of social movements in Thessaloniki. Drawing from Butler, Laclau and Mouffe, and Gibson‐Graham we develop the notion of “communal performativity” both as an academic and as a practical concept to understand and build trajectories of socio‐economic change. “Communal” denotes the drive of the movements’ participants to interconnect and (re)negotiate with a multiplicity of Others, curbing identity politics to articulate internal differences and Otherness. We see some hopeful signs of bridges being built towards shared trajectories of change that can be understood as different but concrete variations on the abstract counter‐narrative of “breaking with neoliberalism”. Some of these variations challenge, others diversify neoliberal discourses and practices.