High rates of unemployment in Europe since the start of the 2008 financial crisis, coupled with changing migration trends, have led to a high number of EU and non-EU migrants asking for social protection benefits. Governments across the EU have accordingly considered reducing migrants’ access to this support, despite the fact that these people are increasingly at risk of poverty and exclusion. Migrants’ strategies to cope with health or unemployment risks are at the core of this project. Spanning from the entitlements in host and home countries to informal family and community-based practices, Dr Lafleur will investigate what he defines as ‘transnational social protection’. His team will compile information on welfare entitlements from the 28 EU member States and 12 non-EU countries into a single database. In addition, they will document the experience of immigrants accessing social protection in various cities across the EU. This data will contribute to a better understanding of the type of social protection policies for citizens living abroad.
As migration has become one of the most salient topic in political debates across Europe, MiTSoPro intends to bring scientific data in debates that often rely on clichés and stereotypes. What kind of access do immigrants have to welfare states across Europe? Are European welfare states more generous with their nationals living abroad than with foreigners residing on their territory? Beyond rights set in legislation, are immigrants actually able to access entitlements or are bureaucratic and other hurdles preventing effective use of social rights? Next to formal entitlements, what type of informal strategies do immigrants put in place to respond to social risks? These are the core research questions that MiTSoPro is addressing by combining quantitative and qualitative approaches.
On the quantitative level, the MiTSoPro team is designing a database on immigrant welfare entitlement across the EU28 Member States. It also looks at 12 additional non-EU states that are among the largest senders of immigrants to Europe in order to determine whether those states are capable to respond to potential deficiencies in access to welfare faced by their citizens who migrated in Europe. This step of the project relies on a network of 80 experts from 40 countries (EU28 + 12 non-EU states). Each state counts one social policy and one migration policy expert who filled two expert surveys (one on social policy and one on diaspora policies) designed to identify the conditions of access to welfare entitlements and other ad hoc benefits in the areas of unemployment, health, social assistance, family benefits and pensions. Survey results will be treated in order to evaluate EU Welfare States' inclusiveness towards immigrants. Results of the survey will be made available in the format of scientific publications (each country experts wrote a report in the format of a book chapter available open access) and of a website where data will be presented in a user-friendly format.
In addition to the survey, the MiTSoPro team is conducting qualitative fieldwork with four immigrant communities across Europe: Senegalese, Tunisian, French and Romanian. In different European cities and in the country of origin, researchers will interview immigrants and relatives in order to identify how they access receiving and sending country welfare entitlements as well as identify the informal strategies by which they compensate for unsatisfactory access to formal welfare state entitlements. Results of the qualitative part of the project will be made available in the format of open access scientific publications (peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters).
