The Value of Citizenship in Access to Social Protection: Conceptual and Methodological Challenge

Increasing mobility to and from EU countries has started to challenge the principles of nationality and territorial membership through which European democracies traditionally conditioned access to social benefits. In the classic understanding of welfare regimes, resident citizens have always been an uncontested category of recipients of welfare entitlements. However, the magnitude of the migration phenomenon has gradually started to alter this traditional definition of social protection beneficiaries in different ways. First, by posing increasing pressures on host countries to extend access to social benefits beyond the closed group of nationality holders, thus granting residence-based social entitlements also to foreigners. Secondly, drawing on efficiency and fairness considerations, sending countries also started to witness increasing demands to ensure the (ex)portability of social benefits for non-resident individuals. This includes not only their nationals residing abroad (under the rationale of a nationality-driven obligation for protecting the diaspora), but also foreigners who accumulated social security rights in these countries and later decided to return to their countries of origin or to continue their migration trajectory elsewhere.
Existing typologies of immigrant social protection regimes that aimed to classify the immigrant population worldwide based on their access to welfare do not seem to adequately capture (nor explain) the diverse repertoire of policy configurations through which European welfare regimes adapt to migration-driven societal dynamics. This paper provides a critical reflection regarding the value of citizenship and residence in access to welfare benefits across the EU. We argue that the observed differences between states and migrant groups that emerge from the comparison of immigrants and emigrants’ social entitlements across welfare regimes of different characteristics can be explained by a combination of factors. This includes not only migrants’ characteristics (demographic shares in home/host countries, general migration patterns and history, or their economic and political leverage), but also contextual factors related to their countries of origin and destination (such as the overall policy philosophy towards migration or the nature of the welfare state).