The Moral Economy Of Welfare And Migration

Britain's coalition government of 2010–2015 ushered in an enduring age of austerity and a "moral mission" of welfare reform as part of a drive for deficit reduction. Stricter controls were applied to both domestic welfare and international migration and asylum, which were presented as two sides of the same coin. Policy in both areas has engaged a moral message of earned entitlement and invites a sociological approach that examines such policies in combination, alongside their underpinning moral economy. Exploring the idea of a moral economy – from its original focus on popular rebellion at the rising price of corn to more contemporary analysis of measures that seek to impose moral values from above – Lydia Morris examines Britain's reconfigured pattern of rights in the fields of domestic welfare and migration. Those in power have claimed that heightened conditions and sanctions for the benefit-dependent domestic population, both in and out of work, will promote labour market change and reduce demand for low-skilled migrant workers, often EU citizens, whose own access to benefits was curtailed prior to Brexit. Morris traces related political discourse through to the design and implementation of concrete policy measures and maps the diminished access to rights that has emerged, paying particular attention to the boundaries drawn in defining target groups, and the resistance this has provoked. The Moral Economy of Welfare and Migration considers the topology of the whole system to highlight cross-cutting devices of control that have far-reaching implications for how we are governed as a total population.

Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman once noted that free immigration cannot coexist with a welfare state. A welfare state with open borders might turn into a haven for poor immigrants, which would place such a fiscal burden on the state that native-born voters would support less-generous benefits or restricted immigration, or both. And yet a welfare state with an aging population might welcome young skilled immigrants. The preferences of the native-born population toward migration depend on the skill and age composition of the immigrants, and migration policies in a political-economy framework may be tailored accordingly. This book examines how social benefits-immigrations political economy conflicts are resolved, with an empirical application to data from Europe and the developed countries, integrating elements from population, international, public, and political economics into a unified static and dynamic framework. Using a static analytical framework to examine intra-generational distribution, the authors first focus on the skill composition of migrants in both free and restricted immigration policy regimes, drawing on empirical research from EU-15 and non-EU-15 states. The authors then offer theoretical analyses of similar issues in dynamic overlapping generations settings, studying not only intragenerational but also intergenerational aspects, including old-young dependency ratios and skilled-unskilled conflicts. Finally, they examine overall gains from or costs of migration in both host and source countries and the race to the bottom argument of tax competition between states in the presence of free migration.

Britain's coalition government of 2010–2015 ushered in an enduring age of austerity and a "moral mission" of welfare reform as part of a drive for deficit reduction. Stricter controls were applied to both domestic welfare and international migration and asylum, which were presented as two sides of the same coin. Policy in both areas has engaged a moral message of earned entitlement and invites a sociological approach that examines such policies in combination, alongside their underpinning moral economy. Exploring the idea of a moral economy – from its original focus on popular rebellion at the rising price of corn to more contemporary analysis of measures that seek to impose moral values from above – Lydia Morris examines Britain's reconfigured pattern of rights in the fields of domestic welfare and migration. Those in power have claimed that heightened conditions and sanctions for the benefit-dependent domestic population, both in and out of work, will promote labour market change and reduce demand for low-skilled migrant workers, often EU citizens, whose own access to benefits was curtailed prior to Brexit. Morris traces related political discourse through to the design and implementation of concrete policy measures and maps the diminished access to rights that has emerged, paying particular attention to the boundaries drawn in defining target groups, and the resistance this has provoked. The Moral Economy of Welfare and Migration considers the topology of the whole system to highlight cross-cutting devices of control that have far-reaching implications for how we are governed as a total population.

Activation policies which promote and enforce labour market participation continue to proliferate in Europe and constitute the reform blueprint from centre-left to centre-right, as well as for most international organizations. Through an in-depth study of four major reforms in Denmark and France, this book maps how co-existing ideas are mobilised to justify, criticise and reach activation compromises and how their morality sediments into the instruments governing the unemployed. By rethinking the role of ideas and morality in policy changes, this book illustrates how the moral economy of activation leads to a permanent behaviourist testing of the unemployed in public debate as well as in local jobcentres.

This book investigates why people are willing to support an institutional arrangement that realises large-scale redistribution of wealth between social groups of society. Steffen Mau introduces the concept of 'the moral economy' to show that acceptance of welfare exchanges rests on moral assumptions and ideas of social justice people adhere to. Analysing both the institution of welfare and the public attitudes towards such schemes, the book demonstrates that people are neither selfish nor altruistic; rather they tend to reason reciprocally.

Bringing together international experts on ethnicity and nationalism, this book argues that competing moral economies play an important role in ethnic and nationalist conflict. Its authors investigate how the beliefs and practices that normatively regulate and legitimize the distribution of wealth, power, and status in a society – moral economies – are being challenged in identity-based communities in ways that precipitate or exacerbate conflicts. The combination of theoretical chapters and case studies ranging from Africa and Asia to North America provides compelling evidence for the value of moral economy analysis in understanding problems associated with ethnic and nationalist mobilization and conflict.

Examining which actors determine undocumented migrants’ access to healthcare on the ground, this volume looks at what happens in the daily interactions between administrative personnel, healthcare professionals and migrant patients in healthcare institutions across Europe. Borders across Healthcare explores contemporary moral economies of the healthcare-migration nexus. The volume documents the many ways in which borders come to disrupt healthcare settings and illuminates how judgements of a health-related deservingness become increasingly important, producing hierarchies that undermine a universal right to healthcare.

This book provides a major new examination of the current dilemmas of liberal anti-racist policies in European societies, linking two discourses that are normally quite separate in social science: immigration and ethnic relations research on the one hand, and the political economy of the welfare state on the other. The authors rephrase Gunnar Myrdal's questions in An American Dilemma with reference to Europe's current dual crisis - that of the established welfare statefacing a declining capacity to maintain equity, and that of the nation state unable to accommodate incremental ethnic diversity. They compare developments across the European Union with the contemporary US experience of poverty, race, and class. They highlight the major moral-political dilemma emerging acrossthe EU out of the discord between declared ideals of citizenship and actual exclusion from civil, political, and social rights. Pursuing this overall European predicament, the authors provide a critical scrutiny of the EU's growing policy involvement in the fields of international migration, integration, discrimination, and racism. They relate current policy issues to overall processes of economic integration and efforts to develop a European 'social dimension'. Drawing on case-study analysisof migration, the changing welfare state, and labour markets in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, the book charts the immense variety of Europe's social and political landscape. Trends of divergence and convergence between single countries are related to the European Union's emerging policies fordiversity and social inclusion. It is, among other things, the plurality of national histories and contemporary trajectories that makes the European Union's predicament of migration, welfare, and citizenship different from the American experience. These reasons also account in part for why it is exceedingly difficult to advance concerted and consistent approaches to one of the most pressing policy issues of our time.Very few of the existing sociological texts which compare different European societies on specific topics are accessible to a broad range of scholars and students. The European Societies series will help to fill this gap in the literature, and attempt to answer questions such as: Is there really such a thing as a 'European model' of society? Do the economic and political integration processes of the European Union also implyconvergence in more general aspects of social life, such a family or religious behaviour? What do the societies of Western Europe have in common with those further to the East?This series will cover the main social institutions, although not every author will cover the full range of European countries. As well as surveying existing knowledge in a manner useful to students, each book will also seek to contribute to our growing knowledge of what remains in many respects a sociologically unknown continent. The series editor is Colin Crouch.