Abstract
Under EU law, EU citizens constitute a particular group of immigrants, as they can, mostly without restrictions, move to, and reside in, another EU country, enjoying equal treatment with nationals in terms of accessing employment and social rights. However, as this article demonstrates, the settlement of EU citizens in another member state does not happen without hurdles. Through a careful in‐depth study of access to transnational welfare rights in practice, we analyse knowledge and resulting power asymmetries impacting interactions between certain EU migrant claimants and street‐level bureaucrats in Austrian and German social administrations. Following an inductive approach, based on an extensive data set of 144 qualitative interviews, this article first unpacks the different types of knowledge asymmetries relating to administrative procedures, formal social entitlements and the German language. We then analyse how such knowledge asymmetries may open space for welfare mediation in order to compensate for a lack of German language skills and to clarify misunderstandings about legal entitlements and obligations embedded in the claims system. Finally, our contribution offers a typology of welfare mediators and their characteristics, as not all types can be regarded as equally effective in reshaping power asymmetries. Overall, this article allows for insights into how welfare mediators, as more or less institutionalised opportunity structures, can shift policy outcomes in unexpected ways, enabling access to social benefits and services for otherwise excluded EU migrant citizens working, or seeking to work, in another EU member state.
Highlights
EU migrant citizens living in a different member state to that whose citizenship they hold enjoy freedom of movement within the EU and transnational social rights, such as entitlements, to certain social subsistence bene‐ fits, if they need financial support and fulfil certain, yet vague, eligibility criteria
While research to date points to how non‐active EU migrants, or those involved in atypical work, commonly remain excluded from social assistance benefits, this arti‐ cle focusses on an under‐researched barrier to claim‐ ing social entitlements, namely the interaction experi‐ ences between EU claimants and street‐level bureau‐ crats
We focus on the knowledge, and resulting power, asymmetries at street‐level
Summary
EU migrant citizens living in a different member state to that whose citizenship they hold enjoy freedom of movement within the EU and transnational social rights, such as entitlements, to certain social subsistence bene‐ fits, if they need financial support and fulfil certain, yet vague, eligibility criteria. In addition to the interpretation of vague technical criteria, stereo‐ typed perceptions of certain EU claimant groups, and related individual judgements that a claimant is unde‐ serving to claim can impede de facto access to social ben‐ efits (Ratzmann, 2021) This contribution seeks to address how the inter‐ play between individual resources and institutional hur‐ dles shapes benefit access in practice, via the interac‐ tion processes between EU migrant claimants on the one hand, and street‐level bureaucrats on the other, i.e., local welfare administrators as representatives of the state apparatus at street‐level. We chose to conceptualise these third parties intervening in the street‐level interaction as welfare mediators, rather than intermediaries—as our data showed such individu‐ als primarily as advising and supporting claimants, rather than occupying a go‐between, intermediate position bro‐ kering in both directions Their main role is to smooth the path to accessing social benefits in practice, acting on behalf of their clients as “welfare influencers,” tak‐ ing on an activist role on the individual level.
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