Negotiating Pathways of Incorporation: Migrants Interaction with Street-Level Bureaucracy in Belgium

Access to social rights is crucial for newly arrived migrants, especially those who do not have the resources to meet basic needs. Building on the literature on street-level bureaucracy, research has shown how the assessment of deservingness is at the heart of the provision of social services to migrant populations and thus conditions effective access to them. From this perspective, interactions between migrants and street-level bureaucrats constitute a site for the (re)production of social hierarchies between deserving and undeserving newcomers. These social hierarchies function as internal border practices that contribute to the control of migration at a post-entry stage. Based on this perspective, this chapter analyses how the everyday practices of street-level social workers and their interactions with migrants affect newcomers’ pathways of incorporation in Belgium. While most of the literature has focused either on the representations and practices of street-level bureaucrats or on those of migrants, we seek to combine both perspectives through the analysis of interviews conducted between 2020 and 2022 with social workers and migrant beneficiaries of the Walloon Public Centres for Social Welfare (PCSWs). This material allows us to frame internal border practices as—largely unbalanced—forms of negotiation between street-level organisations and beneficiaries.