Who Gets to Stay? EU Citizens’ Social Entitlements at Street-Level in German Jobcentres

In the course of European integration, social rights have become increasingly transnational, leading to the possibility for EU citizens to claim benefits in a different member states other than their own, which raises the welfare-mobility dilemma between openness of borders and national protection of resources. As a reaction, member states have started building filters into their social security architecture to keep those EU citizens from staying and settling who they consider to be undesirable residents. The proposed paper contributes to this debate on non-conventional bordering practices, by studying how the German welfare state has adjusted to increased mobility and growing anti-immigrant sentiments. Within Germany, growing societal opposition towards migrants’ access to welfare provisions has let to a restrictive legislative reform in 2017, which has altered the relationship between welfare and migration authorities. The research thus unpacks how local level implementers in social authorities have been transformed into migration management agents in practice and how the new institutional set-up has potentially reshaped their professional role perception beyond their traditionally social mandate. The analysis draws on a wealth of 119 qualitative interviews with jobcentre employees, migrant claimants and welfare support and advisory organisations, as well as participant observation in three Berlin-based jobcentres. The research ultimately contributes to an enhanced understanding of the interlinkages between social protection regulation and internal governance processes of (EU) migration, illustrating how local welfare implementers are implicated in shaping EU migrant settlement in a borderless European space.