Introduction: setting the agenda of this volume
âUnited in Diversityâ, the official motto of the European Union, signifies the cosmopolitan foundations of this political community and emphasizes a positive image of the various forms of diversity that characterize it (Beck 2007). Defining human movements within the EU as âmobilityâ rather than as âmigrationâ, the EU rhetoric suggests that there should be no conflict between the freedom of movement and the mobility of welfare within the EU (EC 2010). While the free movement of workers is defined as one of the constitutive elements of this supranational formation (Boswell and Geddes 2011), access to social security rights for mobile Europeans is structured according to the principle of non-discrimination in accessing formal welfare (Kogan, Gebel, and Noelke 2008). This principle of equal treatment is implemented in the form of one of the most advanced and complex systems of access to and portability of social security rights for mobile EU nationals â the European social security coordination system (Avato, Koettl, and Sabates-Wheeler 2010; Cantillon, Verschuuren, and Ploscar 2012). With the exception of the right to social assistance, this system is designed to protect most of the social security rights of EU citizens who move within the EU (Carmel, Sojka, and PapieĆŒ 2016). However, the premise of equal treatment of mobile EU citizens in the context of European social security coordination is not uncontested. Public debates in the old EU member states have problematized the socioeconomic asymmetries among the member states of the European Union (Kymlicka 2015). Articulating voices of welfare chauvinism, these debates have addressed intra-EU movements as a major concern for the national welfare systems of the old member states (Bruzelius, Chase, and Seeleib-Kaiser 2016; Mewes and Mau 2013).
The central aim of this edited volume is to disentangle the nexus between intra-EU mobility and welfare in the enlarged EU, which currently is articulated by the two above-mentioned positions â European cosmopolitanism and the opposite notion of welfare chauvinism. This book contributes to the social scientific study of intra-EU mobility and migration by providing a comprehensive analysis of relevant regulations and discourses, as well as of mobile Europeansâ experiences of the European social security coordination system. It builds on the empirical results of an international large-scale research project concerning European labour mobility/migration and access to/portability of social security rights in respect to four pairs of countries: HungaryâAustria, BulgariaâGermany, SwedenâEstonia, and PolandâUnited Kingdom.1 Its focus on labour mobility/migration2 goes back to the significant increase in labour movements from the new to the old EU member states in the context of recent EU enlargements (see Engbersen et al. 2013). Using a transnational lens (Amelina and Faist 2012; Amelina 2017), the volume examines how the interplay between patterns of migration/mobility (temporary and permanent) and patterns of moversâ employment (ranging from regular to irregular) impacts on mobile Europeansâ welfare opportunities. More specifically, the aim of this book is to offer a comparative analysis of mobile EU citizensâ access to and portability of social security rights within the framework of European social coordination in fields such as unemployment, family-related benefits, health insurance, and retirement benefits.
In the context of the EUâs social coordination system, the term âportabilityâ indicates that economically active EU citizens (and their family members)3 have the formal right to transfer the social security claims they have in the fields mentioned from their sending to their receiving country, and vice versa. This may take the form of recognition of âprevious periods of insurance, work or residenceâ accumulated in the sending country, which gives entitlement in the receiving country (e.g. unemployment benefits, pensions); or, if a mobile individual is entitled âto cash benefits from one countryâ, that individual âcan receive them even if living in another countryâ (e.g. family benefits) (EC 2010: 8ff.). The social security coordination system, first established in the 1970s (Reg. 1408/71), has been transformed in the contexts of EU enlargements to ensure equal treatment of mobile and immobile EU citizens in terms of access to social security rights (see esp. Reg. 883/2004 and 987/2009; see also Chapter 3 of this volume).
In order to understand the relevant regulations and discourses, as well as the mobile Europeansâ experiences of cross-border social security and social rights portability, this volume uses the conceptual lens of social citizenship theory (Marshall 1950; Hansen and Hager 2010; Powell 2002), thereby addressing European social security coordination as a paradigmatic example of European social citizenship. Within this conceptual framework, the notion of social citizenship refers to social membership (e.g. mobile Europeansâ access to and portability of social security rights) in the context of mobility within a supranational community. This particular type of social membership has a multiscalar quality, in that access to social security rights is organized at different scales of social security governance â namely, the supranational, the national, and the transnational scales (with the transnational scale referring to the regulatory framework between the sending and receiving states). This type of social membership definitely extends the territorial boundaries of individual nation states (Bauböck 1994, 2017; Hansen 2000; Schierup, Hansen, and Castles 2006). In other words, the study of European cross-border security and social rights portability makes it possible to understand both the institutional frameworks and the mobile Europeansâ experiences of social membership in the contemporary European Union while also considering asymmetries between the sending and receiving states.
Before I describe the aims of this volume and the conceptual basis in more detail, I will first give a brief overview of the state of the art in the research on the nexus between intra-EU migration/mobility, welfare, and portability of social security rights.
Beyond the notion of welfare magnet: insights from the research on European migration, welfare, and portability of social security rights
In addressing the nexus between intra-EU migration/mobility and welfare, economists tend to refer to the âwelfare magnetâ hypothesis, which suggests a relationship between individual moversâ decisions to migrate and the welfare state expenditures of their receiving states (Borjas 1999). The welfare magnet hypothesis has never been confirmed by empirical research (Razin and Wahba 2012; Giulietti 2014), but it became very powerful in public debates on intra-EU movements (and beyond). Most importantly, it reifies two other assumptions that are just as problematic. One is that intra-EU movements are one-time movements from a sending to a receiving country. This view neglects the changing quality of intra-EU movements and the role of migrantsâ transnational linkages between their sending and receiving states. The other problematic assumption concerns the structuration and organization of welfare systems, which are presented as closed national welfare âcontainersâ, access to which should only be given to citizens of the respective nation state. This viewpoint overlooks already existing supranational forms of European social security, such as the European social security coordination system, the aim of which is to recognize mobile EU citizensâ rights to access and port social security rights in the areas of unemployment, family benefits, health insurance, and pensions.
To overcome these oversimplified assumptions, it is necessary to take a closer look at the three bodies of literature that are relevant in this context â namely, the literature on (1) intra-EU migration/mobility, (2) on European welfare, and (3) on portability of social security rights.
(1) In their seminal book A Continent Moving West?, first published in 2010, editors Richard Black, Godfried Engbersen, Marek OkĂłlski, and Christina PantĂźru argue that human movements within the European Union have been undergoing fundamental changes in the wake of recent EU enlargements. These changes are linked to the direction of movements (from âEasternâ to âWesternâ Europe, and back) and to the institutional frameworks involved. Along with the free movement of goods, services, and capital, the freedom of movement for workers, introduced with the 2004, 2007, and 2014 enlargements, became one of the essential institutional premises of the European Union, and EU citizensâ movements within the EU became officially ladled as âmobilityâ (Engbersen et al. 2017). The fundamental changes in the patterns of human movements have been reflected in current studies of intra-European migration/mobility (e.g. Verwiebe, Wiesböck, and Teitzer 2014), which show that intra-EU movements are not just one-directional movements from a country of origin to a country of destination; rather, they may exhibit different patterns that shape mobile EU citizensâ practices of accessing and porting social security rights. Engbersen et al. (2013) presented interesting empirical findings on how mobile EU citizensâ attachment to their countries of origin and destination shape patterns of movement, generating four categories of mobile EU citizens: (i) circular migrants (e.g. seasonal workers), who often have a weak attachment to their country of destination; (ii) âbinationallyâ oriented movers with a strong attachment to both their country of origin and their country of destination; (iii) âfootlooseâ movers with a weak attachment to both their country of origin and their country of destination; and (iv) âsettlersâ with a weak attachment to their country of origin. Whether their attachment is weak or strong, all mobile EU citizens organize their lifeworlds transnationally between the sending and receiving countries. These mobility patterns have been confirmed in similar studies â for example, by DĂŒvell and Vogel (2006), who distinguish mobile EU âcitizens oriented on returningâ, âmovers who wish to settleâ, âtemporary moversâ, and âglobal nomadsâ.
These findings indicate that analyses of linkages between forms of migration/mobility and European social security benefit from avoiding the overly simplistic assumptions of the welfare magnet theory. Instead, current research needs to consider the multilocal lifeworlds of mobile Europeans and the consequences these lifeworlds have for moversâ social protection arrangements. Whereas recent studies of European migration/mobility acknowledge this variety of migration patterns, mobile EU citizensâ forms of employment (regular/irregular) are still understudied, and only a few qualitative studies from migration research have approached different forms of irregular work and related practices of exploitation (Amelina 2017; Bommes and Sciortino 2011; Jandl et al. 2009). In addition, welfare studies still often remain focused on national systems (and therefore on the rights of settled âimmigrantsâ), rather than analysing the implications of changing migration/mobility patterns and labour relations for the institutional organization of (European) social security.
(2) The second body of relevant literature (Hammar 1990; Bommes and Geddes 2000; Sainsbury 2012) focuses on the impacts of different welfare systems/regimes on mobile individualsâ access to social security and other types of rights and analyses access within the four ideal-typical welfare regimes: social democratic, conservative, liberal (Esping-Andersen 1990), and Mediterranean (Ferrera 1996). In addition, there are studies of new EU member statesâ post-communist welfare regimes (Carmel, Sojka, and PapieĆŒ 2016) that examine the remarkable differences among and within EU member states (political, economic, social contexts) when it comes to interactions of varying combinations of social protection, welfare, and migration policies; their institutional architecture and articulation at different welfare levels; and the various coexisting processes of inclusion and exclusion of different migrant groups in the ânational societiesâ.
Although the references above cannot, of course, account for the complexity of the research on European welfare, we can still say that many of these studies overgeneralize the various (legal) categories of movers ignoring the impact of legal status on the interaction between (welfare) state and migrant. In addition, given that their main focus is on national welfare systems, these studies do not reflect the supranational organization of social security (e.g. on the EU level) and the institutional selectivity criteria it involves. Because studies of this type focus mainly on institutional frameworks, they rarely consider the changing and increasingly transnational quality of migration/mobility that contributes to the transnational lifeworlds of European movers and to the ways they use social security in practice. In many cases, it also remains unclear how the interplay of different sets and levels of regulations and the diverse welfare systems of the sending and receiving EU member states may become an obstacle to accessing and porting social security rights.
(3) The third research area addresses some of these lacunas by focusing on the emergence of supranational citizenship, as laid down in the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 (Hansen and Hager 2010; Maas 2007, 2013). It is concerned primarily with how mobile EU citizens access and port social security rights from one member state to another. In this regard, portability has been defined as âthe possibility of acquiring and keeping social benefitsâ entitlements and/or social rights in the event of mobility for work [or other] reasonsâ (dâAddio and Cavalleri 2015: 346). Differentiating various regimes of social security rights portability, researchers have highlighted that the European portability regime offers mobile individuals relatively non-discriminatory access, which for EU nationals is organized in accordance with the European social coordination system (Avato, Koettl, and Sabates-Wheeler 2010; Holzmann and Koettl 2012). The most relevant legislative acts today are Regulations 883/2004 and 987/2009. Portability can be defined as âthe ability to preserve, maintain, and transfer vested social security rights or rights in the process of being vestedâ (Avato, Koettl, and Sabates-Wheeler 2010: 456). Porting social rights from the migration-sending to the migration-receiving country becomes particularly important when these rights include elements of a long-term fund (e.g. health care, pension) (Avato, Koettl, and Sabates-Wheeler 2010: 456). From a somewhat more labour market-related perspective, portability has been defined as âthe possibility of acquiring and ...
