The problem of poor people’s mobility – a genealogical inquiry

Abstract

In recent years, an increasingly visible poverty has been widely debated in Sweden, not least in terms of 'vulnerable EU citizens'. Issues of EU-internal mobility have gained renewed interest as EU citizens have the legal right to move freely within the EU. The focus in this debate has been on poor EU citizens categorized as 'Roma'. In many respects, 'the Roma' have become a symbol for the mobility of poor people as a problem. The purpose of this article is to investigate contemporary discourses on poor people's mobility as a social problem, in the light of similar descriptions in the past. Starting with the 2010s, we analyse governmental reports from the 1950s and 1920s in which the mobility of poor people has been subjected to political debate. We draw upon a genealogical approach informed by Michel Foucault, focusing on the categorization of mobile poor people as problematic and deviant, in relation to what is conceptualized as the norm. In line with this approach, we analyse historical formations of particular 'regimes of truth' concerning the mobility of poor people. Our results show that the mobility of poor people is a recurring problem, even though in different ways at different times. The political responses to the problems caused by poor people's mobility range from disciplinary and excluding to assimilating interventions directed at the mobility of poor peoplein the 2010s represented by 'the vulnerable EU citizens', in the 1950s by 'the gypsies' and in the 1920s by 'the travellers'.

The precarious inclusion of homeless EU migrants in Norwegian public social welfare: Moral bordering and social workers’ dilemmas

“…Like much of the literature on intra-EEA/EU mobility (e.g., Jørgensen and Thomsen, 2016; Lafleur and Mescoli, 2018; Tervonen et al, 2018), this article employs the term EU migrants. I acknowledge the risk of underplaying that the migrants are EU citizens enacting their right to free movement but find the term more apt for capturing the heterogeneity of the migrants focussed on in my study than alternatives such as vulnerable EU citizens (Persdotter, 2019;Dahlstedt et al, 2019) or poor visiting EU citizens (Ekendahl et al, 2020). In the Norwegian context, these constructs are inevitably associated with Romanian Roma who beg on the streets, without possibilities of settling permanently in the country.…”

“…Moral concerns with people’s mobility, and particularly with ‘poor’ people’s mobility, and their worthiness of societal inclusion and assistance from the community is not a new topic within social work – nor are discussions of territorial belonging and deservingness restricted to people who move across national borders (Cuadra, 2015; Dahlstedt et al, 2019; Lorenz, 2006; Persdotter, 2019). Moreover, dilemmas of balancing care and control are not specific to social work with migrants but intrinsic to social work in general (Ekendahl et al, 2020; Lorenz, 2006).…”