National Center of Competence in Research – The Migration-Mobility Nexus
Giuliano Bonoli, Flavia Fossati and Francesco Maiani
Welfare: Inclusion and Solidarity
Project Summary
Welfare states are the main tool market economies use to redistribute wealth and reduce inequality. Migration and mobility have brought new challenges to European welfare states that are visible in patterns of public opinion and the evolution of social legislation.
Our first subproject investigates the link between the willingness to redistribute resources and the multi-ethnic character of a society by refining our understanding of redistribution and otherness. We explore which redistributive arrangements are more politically acceptable in multi-ethnic societies, and if legal provisions on free movement have changed views on entitlement. Subproject two looks at free movement and national welfare systems, analyzing the EU rules on access to social benefits and their impact on the member states and evolution. We investigate the extent to which EU law on free movement ‘opened up’ access to social benefits, and how national legislation has adapted to it. We also look at how this law has been influenced by such responses.
Even in extraordinary circumstances, evaluations of deservingness for financial aid, medical care, and cross-border mobility are based on conditional solidarity.
Individual contribution to society and nationality were important for deservingness assessments.
There is a need for more communication with the public about the ethics of medical triage.
Swiss respondents favor the provision of financial support for self-employed. The latter, who are typically against state interventions, support more generous forms of help, indicating that need and interests override ideological preferences in such crisis situations. This finding shows in which situations ideological preferences can shift.
Results regarding vaccine distribution revealed considerable cross-generational solidarity in vaccine distribution, as younger age cohorts prioritize the elderly. In contrast, older groups prioritize health care workers.
Subproject two
Directive 2004/38/EC, which regulates EU citizens’ access to social benefits, led to substantive legal uncertainty. This has led to divergent interpretations of EU law by domestic actors, both, governments and national courts.
This uncertainty gave some margin of maneuver to Member States’ governments to influence the evolution of EU case law. Based on Germany and UK cases, we found that Member States contributed to the evolution of case law by ‘pushing the boundaries’ of EU law both domestically and before the ECJ.
Further, uncertainty also served as a window of opportunities for domestic actors to advance their own interpretations at the national level. In Germany, for example, the government and national courts of different levels used legislation, litigation processes, and referrals to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to advance their legal interpretations and exclude EU citizens from social benefits.
