What Drives the Immigration-Welfare Policy Link? Comparing Germany, France and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Western European states have increasingly linked immigration and welfare policy. This trend has important implications for European welfare-state trajectories, but accounts of the policy reasoning behind it have diverged. Are policymakers attempting to delimit social citizenship to secure welfare-state legitimacy? Pursuing new, market-oriented welfare-state goals? Symbolically communicating immigration control intentions to voters? Or attempting to instrumentally steer immigration flows? These accounts have rarely been tested empirically against each other. Redressing this, we employ 83 elite interviews in a comparative process-tracing study of policies linking welfare provision and immigration status in Germany, France, and the UK during the 1990s. We find little evidence suggesting welfare-guided policy reasonings. Rather, this policy linkage appears “immigration-guided:” meant to control “unwanted” immigration or resonate symbolically in immigration politics. Differences in exclusions from welfare support for migrants grew from existing national differences in welfare-state design and politicizations of immigration, not from policy intentions, which were largely shared.

The “Pull Factor” Problematization in the Emergence of Everyday Bordering in the UK Welfare State

“…Of course, this study has limitations. While in examining the UK, this article takes a distinct look at a case frequently cited in everyday bordering contributions, the UK is not necessarily representative of other countries where everyday bordering has acceleratedthough there are reasons to suspect similar dynamics at work in welfare bordering in other Western European countries during this time (Slaven et al 2021). The time under study is also subject to limitations: While the 1990s and early 2000s were a key period in the growth of welfare bordering and border internalization in the UK (Owers 1994;Morris 1998), it could very well be that the problematizations underlying everyday bordering shifted later, especially following the 2008 financial crisis and a trend toward increasingly pronounced autochthonous claims in politics.…”

Newcomers Navigating the Welfare State

“…More particularly, we will focus on the levels and ways in which discretion operates when institutions and their agents decide whether to allocate or not any social benefits to newcomers -and under which conditions. This analysis reveals relevant aspects of the immigration-welfare policy link (Bommes & Geddes, 2000;Slaven et al, 2021) as it functions on the ground. It explores the overall structural approach of the social protection system towards immigrants and its more or less developed inclusiveness , as well as its implementation through local agencies and individuals' practices Berman, 1978).…”

Racial platform capitalism: Empire, migration and the making of Uber in London

“…The racialised carving out of migrants from the UK welfare state has been underway for decades; immigration checks have been embedded in social service provision since the 1990s (Slaven et al, 2021). This has been driven by scarcity logics, propagated by politicians and the press, which frame migrants as undesirable, illegitimate exploiters of limited welfare state resources; as such, 'those seeking to establish their family life in the UK must do so on a basis that prevents burdens on the State and UK taxpayer' (Home Office News Team, 2020).…”

“…This 'welfare-immigration policy link' (Slaven et al, 2021) reached its apex in the 2012 Hostile Environment framework, which expanded 'no recourse to public funds' (NRPF) to include anyone without indefinite leave to remain. Here, those without settled status are cut from state services such as healthcare, housing and childcare, even if required to pay taxes (Goodfellow, 2019).…”