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Since European Union (EU) enlargement in 2003, labour migration from East to West and South to North has increased. It is to be expected that a share of these workers will want to retire in their host countries. According to the academic literature, EU legislation protects such mobility well by allowing the transfer of rights accrued in any EU country to another. However, such research has focused on legislation, not outcomes. We know little about how migration will affect the financial status of retired migrants in their host country and their ability to sustain a life there, should they stay after retirement. Using migration, wage and pension policy data (Eurostat, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), this paper projects the post-retirement incomes of a range of hypothetical EU migrants, selected in relation to the most common migratory flows since 2003. After having worked in their home countries (Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Italy) for at least ten years, these people move to richer countries (Italy, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom) and work there for at least 30 years. To determine whether they can remain settled after decades of labour force participation in the host country, the paper adds their pension entitlements from home and host countries and compares this income with the relative poverty line of the host countries. This shows that good portability of entitlements matters little when these are very low because of a large wage gap between home and host country. Thus, after at least 30 years of enjoying all citizenship rights as workers, most of these individuals are projected to receive incomes below the relative poverty line of their host countries and thus experience a sharp drop in this status. Their citizenship is diminished. The paper concludes by considering policies that could avoid such an outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern welfare regimes rest on a range of actors – state, market, family/households, employers and charities – but austerity programmes diminish the contribution of the state. While changes in this 'welfare mix' require support from the population, attitude studies have focused mainly on people's views on state responsibilities, using welfare regime theory to explain differences. This paper contributes to our understanding of the welfare mix by including other providers such as the market, the family or employers, and also introduces social risk theories, contrasting new and old risks. Regime theory implies differences will persist over time, but risk theory suggests that growing similarities in certain risks may tend to promote international convergence. This article examines attitudes to the roles of state, market, family, charity/community and employer for pension and childcare in Germany and the UK. We collected data using deliberative forums, a new method in social policy research that allows citizens space to pursue extended lightly moderated discussion and permits researchers to analyse people's justifications for their attitudes. Our research indicated patterns of convergence especially in preferences for childcare, but that regime predominates in people's justifications for their attitudes: regime differences in attitudes are resilient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains different rates of positive asylum decisions in Western democracies? Legislators and bureaucrats respond to public preferences on immigration, though studies have not accounted for salience amplifying preferences. Using autoregressive models, I find relationships between salience, preferences, and asylum recognition rates in Germany and the UK, indicating that asylum administration responds to public opinion. High salience and more open immigration preferences are associated with increased asylum recognition rates in Germany, while lower rates in the UK follow high salience and restrictive preferences. Applications rejected under these adverse conditions precede increases in successful appeals, suggesting political pressure or their own preferences lead bureaucratic actors to reduce rates in the UK. These results do not support lobbying or a culture of disbelief as influences on immigration policies. Rather, they raise questions about Western democracies' adherence to an international rules-based asylum system and highlight mechanisms by which policy responds to public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German labour market policy regime constitutes a reliable supporting pillar of the highly productive German employment system. Due to the most recent reforms, its core principle of status protection – a basic norm of the German middle-class-related model of social protection for the population of working age – is losing its formative character. Our analysis focuses on three separate policy principles that form the guiding logic of status centredness, namely the equivalence in security provision, the mechanisms that protect the socio-economic status in the event of unemployment, and the tripartite mode of funding. We argue that the ‘Hartz Reforms’ have reinforced the logic of the legal modifications since the mid-1990s, cumulating now in a shift away from the middle-class-oriented status-centred approach of social security provision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The literature addressing attitudes about social policy and the welfare state has been telling us for decades that welfare interventions are supported by those individuals who benefit from a specific measure. The diffusion of ‘demanding’ active labour market policies (ALMPs), however, challenges this relationship. Using a novel dataset, I analyse which individual- and country-level factors explain public support for demanding ALMPs in five Western European countries. The results show that labour market risk and ideological orientation influence public attitudes towards these ALMPs. Thereby, unemployed individuals sympathising with the political right are more strongly opposed to demanding measures than employed individuals with the same political preferences. Moreover, aggregate support is found to be correlated with the country's ALMP legacy, varying from high levels in Germany and the UK to low levels in Denmark and France. The findings suggest that most ALMPs are in fact implemented despite the opposition of their beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]