The role of Bilateral Social Security Agreements in migrants’ social protection: a comparison across EU27

In a context of increased ethnic diversity due to sustained migration inflows especially since the 1960s, the access of third-country nationals to welfare across the EU has become a major area of concern. On the one side, the recent financial crisis has led to growing unemployment levels amongst this specific group of mobile individuals, with almost half of them being considered at risk of poverty or social exclusion across the EU (Eurostat 2019). On the other hand, their access to European welfare systems has gained high salience in public opinion (European Social Survey 2016) and political discourses in which non-EU migrants are sometimes portrayed as “underserving users” or “abusers” of welfare (Schmidt, Blauberger& Martinsen 2018; Ruhs& Palme 2018). Against this general background, this paper seeks to understand how and why EU Member States ensure the social protection coverage of non-EU migrants residing in their territory by concluding bilateral social security agreements (BSSAs) with third countries. Although different legal arrangements for migrants’ social protection exist, BSSAs are still labelled as the oldest and most efficient instrument of international social security law aiming to regulate welfare rights between countries. Drawing on an original dataset of the BSSAs currently in place between EU Member States and the top five origin countries of third-country nationals residing in their territory, we show that the gradual bilateral collaboration in this field led to a high proportion of non-EU migrant communities being currently covered in their access to welfare benefits across EU27. Yet, not all EU Member States have been equally active in signing such conventions and some of them put forward a rather preferential treatment of certain groups of third-country nationals. First, the timeline of these agreements shows how many of them emerged due to existing labour shortages in Europe, changing migration patterns or major historical events. Second, an in-depth analysis of their personal scope reveals that European states often followed a rather strategic rationale based on the anticipation of the potential costs that such agreements would have on domestic welfare systems, this explaining their preference for concluding BSSAs with specific origin countries and the nature of benefits covered by each agreement.