Regulating the Poor through Internal Borders: The EU in Historical and International Perspectives
| Author | Martin Seeleib-Kaiser |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/13882627211064637 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Regulating the Poor through
Internal Borders: The EU in
Historical and International
Perspectives
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser
Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen, Germany
Abstract
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 coali-
tions, or the le adership of act ors 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 signif-
icant role.
Keywords
China, England, EU, freedom of movement, Germany, social citizenship, social rights, USA
Introduction
Increased migration and mobility within the European Union (EU) have led to a politicisation of
freedom of movement and highly contested debates about ‘unreasonable burdens’caused by
‘welfare tourism’(Roos, 2019; Verschueren, 2014). EU citizens have the right to freedom of move-
ment and to take up residence in any Member State; but this right to residence does not
Corresponding author:
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen, Germany.
E-mail: martin.seeleib-kaiser@uni-tuebingen.de
Article
European Journal of Social Security
2022, Vol. 24(1) 3–20
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/13882627211064637
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automatically entail a right to access welfare. According to the EU Citizenship Directive (2004/38),
only those mobile EU citizens who have worker status are entitled to all social benefits and services
in a Member State of destination from day one of their residence. Those with sufficient means and
health insurance have the right to residence but have to prove a minimum five-year duration of resi-
dence before they have the same social rights as nationals. During the past decade, various rulings
by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) have confirmed the possibility of excluding
‘economically inactive’EU migrant citizens
1
from access to social assistance by Member States
during their first five years of residence (Jacqueson, 2018; Verschueren, 2017). This policy leads
to an exclusion of a significant number of EU migrant citizens from accessing social protection
minima and exposes them to labour market exploitation in destination countries. Once needy EU
migrant citizens apply for social assistance, a number of destination Member States revoke their
residence status, request them to leave the country, and/or ‘support’them to travel ‘home’
2
(cf.
Kramer, 2020; Lafleur and Elsa, 2018; Schrauwen, 2021; Valcke, 2020).
During the past years, a rich literature on tensions between freedom of movement and access to
social benefits has emerged. For instance, political scientists have focused on normative questions
of the duties and conditions required of citizens (cf. Ferrera, 2019), the judicialisation of citizenship
(Schmidt, 2019), and the politicisation of intra-EU migration (Roos, 2019). Economists and poli-
tical scientists have analysed the cost-benefit relationship of internal EU migration (e.g. Dustmann
and Frattini, 2014; Martinsen and Werner, 2019). Sociologists and social policy analysts have
focused on the relevance of institutional welfare arrangements (Ruhs and Palme, 2018) and the dif-
ferences between Member States of origin and destination with respect to social rights (Bruzelius
et al., 2017). They have also analysed the role of local and street-level bureaucrats (Martinsen et al.,
2019; Ratzmann, 2021) and the lived experiences of EU migrant citizens themselves (Ehata and
Seeleib-Kaiser, 2017). Meanwhile, socio-legal scholars have highlighted the importance of ‘resi-
dence’and its meaning thereof as a precondition for benefits (Stendahl, 2016).
3
To be able to systematically assess the current debates, we must ask whether and to what extent
the tensions associated with internal migration and accessing welfare within the EU are sui generis
or a new phenomenon from historical and international-comparative perspectives.
4
Hence, I have
used a diachronic and international comparative approach that follows a Most Different Systems
Design. Moreover, my analysis builds on comparative historical institutionalism (Thelen, 1999).
Primarily based on secondary literature, I compare the institutional arrangements restricting poor
internal migrants’access to social protection minima and analyse the conditions and drivers that
have contributed to abolishing these restrictions in four jurisdictions: industrialising England,
current-day China, and the two federal states of Germany and the United States. Despite stark dif-
ferences in the political and economic systems of these four cases, all have historically restricted
1. I define EU migrant citizens as EU citizens who are, or intend to become, habitually resident in a Member State of which
they do not hold nationality.
2. E.g., the German government ‘supports’poor EU migrant citizens with a loan to travel ‘home’(cf. § 23, Para. 3a of the
Social Code Book XII).
3. Cf. the 2016 Special Issue of the European Journal of Social Security on the issue of residence.
4. Although internal migration and resulting tensions around accessing social rights are neither historically nor internation-
ally unique, very few researchers have placed the current EU debate into a broader historical and/or international com-
parison (but see Bruzelius and Seeleib-Kaiser, 2021; Kovacheva et al., 2012; Maas, 2021; Prak et al., 2018; Schönberger,
2005; van der Mei, 2003). Cf. the 2019 Special Issue of the European Journal of Social Security on the issue of internal
coordination.
4European Journal of Social Security 24(1)
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