The impact of conditionality on the welfare rights of EU migrants in the UK

Abstract

This paper highlights and explores how conditionality operating at three levels (the EU supranational level, the UK national level and in migrants' mundane 'street level' encounters with social security administrators), come together to restrict and have a negative impact on the social rights of EU migrants living in the UK. Presenting analysis of new data generated in repeat qualitative interviews with 49 EU migrants resident in the UK, the paper makes an original contribution to understanding how the conditionality inherent in macro level EU and UK policy has seriously detrimental effects on the everyday lives of individual EU migrants.

Turning citizens into immigrants: state practices of welfare ‘cancellations’ and document retention among EU nationals living in Glasgow

“…They also demonstrate how restricting the rights of EU citizens has been ongoing and was already at play prior to major policy changes targeting migrants introduced by the UK government in 2014 (cf. Dwyer et al 2018) and pre-dated recent debates around Brexit. The experiences of structural racism highlighted here lend further weight to the argument put forward by various critics that Brexit is underpinned by racism, xenophobia, and colonialism (Virdee and McGeever 2017), and how these modes of oppression and exclusion have increasingly "become tied into the [British] state itself" (Sivanandan 2017, 2).…”

“…Notwithstanding these changes and variations relating to the UK, overall there is a consensus among scholars and critics that welfare provision for migrant populations throughout Western societies has become increasingly more restrictive, leading to the exclusion of various groups from accessing social welfare and participating in these societies (Schierup et al 2006, 3;Breidahl 2012;Dwyer et al 2018). This has often been attributed to the significant restructuring and transformation that welfare systems have undergone in past decades, resulting into the gradual withdrawal of the state support and the continued decline in the role of the state in providing care for its (both migrant and non-migrant) population.…”

Commentary: A Citizenship without Social Rights? EU Freedom of Movement and Changing Access to Welfare Rights

“…The literature has always emphasized areas in which EU citizenship rights failed to fulfil participatory norms of citizenship (Meehan, ; Shaw, ), or have been stratified according to socio‐economic status (i.e., excluding the non‐economically active), or unequal due to country of origin and destination differences (Roos, ; Bruzelius et al, ). Conditionality – for example, rules of residence – have been used to impose further restrictions (Bruzelius et al, ; Dwyer et al, ). Social policy analysts have highlighted the creative ways that welfare states or national courts have devised new modes of implementing EU directives, quarantining EU citizens away from certain benefits (Blauberger and Schmidt, ; Heindlmeier and Blaumberger, ; Kramer et al, ; Martinsen and Werner, ).…”

‘Shunning’ and ‘Seeking’ Membership: Rethinking Citizenship Regimes in the European Constitutional Space

“…Of course, Union citizenship does follow eventual accession, but extended transitional regimes and delayed access to labour markets and, especially, welfare regimes can render even this status contingent and partial, as Slovenians and Croatians in the region can attest. 180 It is clear that denial of accession is at least partly about the denial of free movement and labour market access. Moreover, the legal texts governing accession and transition are often complex and require interpretation by the CJEU, rendering the law intransparent and inaccessible.…”