Migrants and solidarities: Negotiating deservingness in welfare micropublics

Abstract

The project explores the fundamental question of who is, and who is not, considered deserving of welfare services, how deservingness is negotiated and with what implications, in a context of increasing diversity driven by migration, welfare restructuring, and austerity. Such negotiations serve to draw boundaries between those migrants who have access to the support and services of the welfare state, or are believed to have access, and those who are excluded, e.g. because they are deemed as not belonging or are seen as responsible for their own neediness. Variation will be made visible and comparable by exploring how solidarities are informed by different constellations of welfare and migration regimes, in both urban areas and rural / small towns with varying degrees of diversity and migrant settlement. Our multi-sited ethnography in Denmark, Sweden, and the UK will focus on six welfare micropublics, local spaces where entitlements to support and services are negotiated. We focus on how deservingness is constituted according to migrants’ generational status and according to spatial dimensions of the neighbourhood where migrants settle.

Keywords

Diversity, Intersectionality, Migration, Deservingness, Micropublics

Publications

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