Mobility and Access to Welfare in the EU: Mapping the Inclusiveness of European Social Protection Systems Towards Mobile Individuals

Increasing mobility to and from EU countries has started to challenge the principles of territoriality and national citizenship 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 nationals. Existing typologies of immigrant social protection regimes 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 on the link between migration and access to welfare in the EU. Drawing on an original dataset, the paper discusses a comprehensive analytical framework that allows for a systematic comparison of the inclusiveness of European social protection systems towards mobile individuals. In doing so, we propose a new typology of how EU Member States respond to increasing societal diversity in the field of welfare.