Suchergebnisse

Tensions surrounding internal migrants' access to welfare and the associated politicisations about who should shoulder the 'fiscal burden' are not unique to the European Union (EU). Based on a Most Different Systems Design and following an institutionalist approach, this article analyses the developments associated with freedom of movement and access to poor relief/social assistance in four economically and politically diverse jurisdictions. It also considers the implications of these developments for the EU. The four cases analysed are industrialising England, contemporary China, Germany, and the United States. Although economic integration was a necessary, it was not a sufficient condition for the abolishment of residence requirements for internal migrants in all four jurisdictions. Moreover, it took political power, various coalitions, or the leadership of actors to overcome the barriers and hurdles on the path to social citizenship in the wider territorial jurisdictions. Solidarity as a precondition did not play a significant role.

AbstractThis article investigates change and continuity of the German welfare state at the institutional as well as at the outcome level in the domains of family, pension and unemployment policies. It shows that seemingly path‐dependent policy adaptations – largely through drift, layering and recalibration – have led to a paradigmatic and indeed transformational adjustment of welfare state arrangements. The unsettling of institutional arrangements and functional underpinnings of the welfare state in the wake of German unification constituted a 'critical juncture' facilitating the establishment of new 'interpretative patterns' that have subsequently replaced previous assumptions relating to the economic benefits of social policies and reordered the aims and goals of the welfare state.

Access to social rights is core for the ability of all citizens irrespective of class to more fully enjoy political and civil rights. The development of EU citizenship over the past twenty years has made great progress in granting social rights not only to workers, but also to EU citizens, who fulfil certain minimum residency requirements. These developments are, however, not fully underpinned by the necessary political legitimacy in all Member States. Although across Member States one can detect a nascent solidarity that includes EU migrant citizens, in a number of countries the support for access to social rights by EU migrant citizens is fragile at best, or almost non-existent, as in the United Kingdom. The specific welfare regime of a country does not seem to be of great importance for EU migrant citizens accessing social rights. In practice, access largely depends on meeting residency and/or registration requirements and on the propensity of individual Member States to implement rules limiting access of these rights for EU migrant citizens. Systematic evidence regarding the extent to which EU migrant citizens have been able to access their social rights in EU Member States as well as about the social conditions under which EU migrant citizens live is largely lacking.

"Seit mehr als zwei Dekaden prägt die Rede von den Welten des Wohlfahrtskapitalismus die vergleichende Sozialpolitikforschung. Das als konservativ klassifizierte bundesdeutsche Modell der sozialen Sicherung in den Bereichen der Arbeitslosenversicherung und Rentenpolitik nähert sich jedoch erkennbar dem liberalen US-amerikanischen Modell an. Erhebliche Unterschiede in der Absicherung von sozialpolitisch randständigen Gruppen bleiben allerdings bestehen. In den USA werden diese Teile der Bevölkerung zudem vielfach kriminalisiert." (Autorenreferat, IAB-Doku)