Welfare Mediators as Game Changers? Deconstructing Power Asymmetries Between EU Migrants and Welfare Administrators

Under EU law, EU citizens constitute a particular group of immigrants, as they can, mostly without restrictions, move to, and reside in, another EU country, enjoying equal treatment with nationals in terms of accessing employment and social rights. However, as this article demonstrates, the settlement of EU citizens in another member state does not happen without hurdles. Through a careful in‐depth study of access to transnational welfare rights in practice, we analyse knowledge and resulting power asymmetries impacting interactions between certain EU migrant claimants and street‐level bureaucrats in Austrian and German social administrations. Following an inductive approach, based on an extensive data set of 144 qualitative interviews, this article first unpacks the different types of knowledge asymmetries relating to administrative procedures, formal social entitlements and the German language. We then analyse how such knowledge asymmetries may open space for welfare mediation in order to compensate for a lack of German language skills and to clarify misunderstandings about legal entitlements and obligations embedded in the claims system. Finally, our contribution offers a typology of welfare mediators and their characteristics, as not all types can be regarded as equally effective in reshaping power asymmetries. Overall, this article allows for insights into how welfare mediators, as more or less institutionalised opportunity structures, can shift policy outcomes in unexpected ways, enabling access to social benefits and services for otherwise excluded EU migrant citizens working, or seeking to work, in another EU member state.

Making Migrants’ Input Invisible: Intersections of Privilege and Otherness From a Multilevel Perspective

For some years, the German public has been debating the case of migrant workers receiving German benefits for children living abroad, which has been scandalised as a case of “benefit tourism.” This points to a failure to recognise a striking imbalance between the output of the German welfare state to migrants and the input it receives from migrant domestic workers. In this article I discuss how this input is being rendered invisible or at least underappreciated by sexist, racist, and classist practices of othering. To illustrate the point, I will use examples from two empirical research projects that looked into how families in Germany outsource various forms of reproductive work to both female and male migrants from Eastern Europe. Drawing on the concept of othering developed in feminist and postcolonial literature and their ideas of how privileges and disadvantages are interconnected, I will put this example into the context of literature on racism, gender, and care work migration. I show how migrant workers fail to live up to the normative standards of work, family life, and gender relations and norms set by a sedentary society. A complex interaction of supposedly “natural” and “objective” differences between “us” and “them” are at work to justify everyday discrimination against migrants and their institutional exclusion. These processes are also reflected in current political and public debates on the commodification and transnationalisation of care.

My Brother the “Other”: Use of Satire and Boundary‐Making by Venezuelan Migrants in Peru

While the criminalization and hyper‐sexualization of Venezuelanmigrants and refugees across South America have received growing scholarly attention, fairly little is known about the coping strategies of migrants in this context. In this article, we build on quantitative and qualitative data from a survey (N = 100), 72 in‐depth interviews, and five focus groups with Venezuelan immigrants in five Peruvian cities, collected between 2018 and 2020, to explore how they make sense of, and react to, negative shifts in public opinion on immigration and the criminalization of Venezuelan nationals. We identify two broad coping mechanisms: (a) opposition to their criminalization, including its satirical ridiculing, and (b) intra‐group boundary‐making and “othering.” Our findings make an important contribution to the literature on migrant responses to criminalization and intra‐group relations in the Global South.

Urban Commoning: An Assessment of Its Aesthetic Dimension

The practice of urban commoning continues to tickle the imagination of activists and academics alike. Urban commoning’s aesthetic dimension, yet, has not been fully understood. This contribution seeks to fill such gap and approaches aesthetics in the literal sense: That which presents itself to sense perception. The article thus asks: To what extent may commoning practices that are dedicated to the disclosure of unheard voices (hence having an aesthetic dimension) shift urban power relations? This contribution takes its cue in Jacques Rancière’s theory of aesthetics and has the commoning experiment of Pension Almonde as its central case. Pension Almonde constituted a commons‐based, temporary occupation of a vacant social housing complex in Rotterdam, aimed specifically to undo the subordinate position of urban nomads and orphaned cultural initiatives. The article finally develops the distinction between a particular‐aesthetic dimension (making unheard voices merely perceptible) and a universal‐aesthetic dimension (shifting power relations) of urban commoning. Given the case’s lack of collective agency and external resonance, urban power relations remained in place.

On the Fringes of Urban Justice: Violence and Environmental Risks in Guatemala City

Living in the city’s ravines is the common destiny of thousands of poor urban dwellers in Guatemala City, as is too often the case elsewhere in the Global South. The ravines surrounding the city represent one of the most visible and unjust urban spaces in the nation’s capital. At the same time, Guatemala City has been among the most violent cities in the world and is highly vulnerable to climate change. Employing a critical spatial perspective and drawing on interviews in two at‐risk communities—Arzú and 5 de Noviembre—this article examines the social production of such peripheral spaces. The levels of exclusion and inequalities are analysed by focusing on the multiple manifestations (visible and invisible) of violence and environmental risks, and deciphering the complex dynamics of both issues, which in turn generate more unequal and harmful conditions for residents. This article draws on the theoretical ideas elaborated by Edward Soja, Mustafa Dikeç, and Teresa Caldeira on the contextualisation of spatial injustice and peripheral urbanisation to study the specific conditions of urban life and analyse the collective struggles of people in both communities to improve their current living conditions and mitigate the risk and the precariousness of their existence. The article underlines the need to make the processes of urban exclusion and extreme inequality visible to better understand how they have been socially and politically constructed. The research argues for more socially and ecologically inclusive cities within the process of unequal urbanisation.

Governmentality, the Local State, and the Commons: An Analysis of Civic Management Facilities in Barcelona

This article deploys the Foucauldian concept of governmentality to study the political tensions that may unfold when commons are enacted through hybrid institutional configurations. We focus on civic management facilities (CMFs) that are located in the city of Barcelona. These are facilities owned by Barcelona City Council which, responding to organised citizens’ demands, are transferred to them so that they can develop their own transformative projects for the community. The hybrid institutional nature of these CMFs makes it impossible for them to avoid maintaining a relationship with the local state. Based on a survey to 51 CMFs, semi‐structured interviews with 41 grassroots members of CMFs and seven semi‐structured interviews with public employees and politicians, we argue that hybrid forms of commons lead to the development of political tensions. On the one hand, we show how the local state’s administrative procedures—to do with accountability and the use of public space—reshape the activities of the CMFs, leading to the depoliticisation of their transformative projects. On the other hand, the analysis also presents the strategies of resistance articulated by the facilities, which enable members to work towards the development of their transformative aims. We conclude that such political tensions cannot be resolved but must be properly governed in order to make the commons’ transformative project an enduring one.

The World Bank and Healthcare Reforms: A Cross‐National Analysis of Policy Prescriptions in South America

Recent literature on comparative welfare states has recognised the central role international financial institutions (IFIs) play in shaping social policy. Particularly in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs), where constraints often lead to reliance on foreign resources, IFIs can act as agenda‐setters, transferring their ideas to vulnerable governments. The neoliberal model promoted by IFIs at the end of the 20th century reveals their influence on domestic policy in South America. This study analyses the impact of World Bank (WB) prescriptions on healthcare reform legislation in five South American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, and Peru. In doing so, it attempts to answer the following questions: Are LMICs receptive to IFIs’ healthcare system prescriptions? More precisely, have WB policy prescriptions been adopted in healthcare reform legislation in South American countries? If so, in what way? Through content analysis, this study examines domestic healthcare legislation vis‐à‐vis the WB’s prescriptions. The main findings show that countries are receptive to IFIs prescriptions, making them a legitimate source of policy recommendations. Further, the results suggest a correlation between economic development and reliance on foreign resources and the degree to which countries adhere to IFIs prescriptions.

“The Revolution Will Be Feminist—Or It Won’t Be a Revolution”: Feminist Response to Inequality in Chile

This article argues that gender inequality, which in Chile is superimposed on a societal and economic structure characterized by deep inequalities that cut across every aspect of society, has been sustained by a political and legal system that has severely limited women’s access to economic power and equality. The neoliberal policies implemented by the Pinochet dictatorship and maintained by the democratically elected regimes after 1990—generally characterized as an elitist democracy—have sustained this pattern of inequality. We argue that this gender inequality gave urgency to the regeneration and evolution of Chile’s feminist movement and drove the movement to develop claims against “the precarity of life,” uniting Chileans in a common struggle, contributing to the October 2019 “social explosion” and now the writing of a new constitution. We believe the current climate is rooted in the social mobilization that was the response to Chile’s economic and political system, and the feminist movement’s ability to put the rights of women at the forefront of the political and socio‐economic agenda. In conclusion, we reevaluate the current climate to consider what a significant feminist presence means and how women can be effectively included and benefit from Chile’s economy and influence its progress.

Differentiated Embedding and Social Relationships Among Russian Migrant Physicians in Finland: A Narrative Socio‐Analysis

Migrants’ processes of (dis)embedding in local and transnational social networks have received growing attention in recent years, but most research focuses on low‐skilled migration. This study explores the affordances and challenges that Russian physicians, as a high‐skilled migrant group in Finland, experience in these processes in work and non‐work domains. Based on semi‐structured biographical interviews with 26 Russian physicians, the study employs Bourdieu’s socio‐analysis to analyze their narratives. The results reveal that Russian migrant physicians negotiate and experience differentiated embedding across work–life domains in local and transnational contexts. They mostly develop collegial relationships with Finnish colleagues and benefit from fulfilling professional relationships in the work domain. However, alongside time and efforts needed for building social ties, various factors often impede friendship making and socialization with locals beyond the work domain. These physicians cope with individual life circumstances through their enduring and supportive relationships with their Russian relatives and colleagues–friends. These results indicate that high‐skilled migrants have a greater opportunity to connect professionally with locals than low‐skilled migrants, but experience similar challenges to the latter in building close personal relationships.

Structural Embeddedness in Transnational Social Fields: Personal Networks, International (Im)Mobilities, and the Migratory Capital Paradox

In this article we focus on individuals’ structural embeddedness in transnational social fields (TSFs) and examine how this is related to patterns of international mobility. The main argument is that the structure of TSFs matters for (im)mobility trajectories, and thus all actors (migrants, non‐migrants, and returnees) need to be examined as a whole to obtain a deeper understanding of the role of social networks in processes of transnational mobility. Taking the case of Romanian migrants in Spain as a TSF connecting their place of origin (Dâmbovița in Romania) with their destination (Castelló in Spain), we analyze survey data for 303 migrants, non‐migrants, and returnees, sampled through an RDS‐like binational link‐tracing design. We then categorize types of personal network using an international mobility scale to assess the degree of structural embeddedness in the TSF. An important contribution is the rigorous operationalization of TSF and assessment of the level of migratory capital of each individual. Our results reveal that migratory capital is not always linked positively with high mobility patterns and that its role is strongly related to the overall composition and structure of the TSF.