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Welfare rights in Norway, as in other European nation-states, are increasingly used as techniques of control and management of irregular migration. Proliferation of borders is generated by dispersal of welfare rights, establishing structural differentiations. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with irregular migrants in Norway, we argue that the neoliberal welfare state produces precarious subject positions in three mundane ways: (a) through demarcation and diversification of rights; (b) through governmentality of time and temporality, such as the imposition of waiting; and (c) through access or lack of access to services in the welfare state, including what we call digital borders. Exploring the bordering structures of the welfare state we analyse the complex relation between technologies of government and its effect on everyday life of irregular migrants and we understand this relation as slow violence. This slow violence operates and is legitimized through the legal, policy and neoliberal welfare structures of the state. We show that the welfare state's implication in migration management is legitimated by the Norwegian state's principles of universalism and egalitarianism. Simultaneously, the seeping of migration management into welfare state principles and practices as well as the neoliberalization of the welfare state dwindle egalitarianism as a principle and value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1965, impoverished Clevelanders and their allies brought dead rats to City Hall to demonstrate that they alone had the required expertise to write antipoverty policy. They used the rats to educate their representatives about poverty conditions after their unsucessful struggle to gain control over the local War on Poverty. Scholarship on the War on Poverty and welfare rights movement has uncovered stories of innovative women who fought for official and unofficial access to policymaking. But our focus on movement leaders and sympathetic allies has obscured how some of these activists defined democracy. Activists in Cleveland envisioned democracy as a system where those affected by a policy had influence over its crafting. Their radical vision of urban municipal policymaking illuminates that historians have over emphasized the concessions that these women forced from their representatives, an interpretation which has inadvertently privileged access to a seat at the table over their larger goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defenders of current restrictions on EU immigrants' access to welfare rights in host member states often invoke a principle of reciprocity among member states to justify these policies. The argument is that membership of a system of social cooperation triggers duties of reciprocity characteristic of welfare rights. Newly arriving EU immigrants who look for work do not meet the relevant criteria of membership, the argument goes, because they have not yet contributed enough to qualify as members on the grounds of reciprocity. Therefore, current restrictions on their access to welfare rights are justified. In this article, I challenge this argument by showing how restrictions on EU immigrants' access to welfare rights are inconsistent with duties of international reciprocity. There are different variations of this challenge, but my focus here will be on one that uses a veil of ignorance device to support this claim. What matters from a perspective concerned with international reciprocity, I will argue, is what kind of welfare policy EU member states would choose were they not to know whether those receiving EU migrants were net contributors or net beneficiaries to the relevant scheme of international cooperation made possible by the four freedoms, and freedom of movement in particular. I argue that framing the requirement of reciprocity in this way provides a more comprehensive understanding of what should count as an 'unreasonable burden' on the welfare systems of host member states. The paper also examines alternative accounts of 'unreasonable burdens'. It shows when and how the current institutional structure of the EU could take steps to deal with such burdens by preventing member states from gaming a comprehensive system of welfare rights protections across member states and by recognising the achievements of those member states that best serve them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the years, social policy scholars have advanced a multi-level perspective of non-take-up, viewing it as is a complex process shaped by a broad range of interacting barriers and actors. However, a comparatively small amount of that scholarship has addressed the key role of take-up agents: professionals or semi-professionals who actively help clients realise their welfare rights. Moreover, most of this scant literature has tended to focus on the agents' impact rather than on their role and practices. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Israeli take-up agents from the public, business, and non-profit sectors, this study seeks to understand better the work of take-up agents in realising their clients' welfare rights. Our findings show that in order to pass their clients through the gateways of welfare, agents use four keys: knowledge, networking, emotions, and power. The meaning of these keys and related practices is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces domestic legislative and administrative reactions to case law by the European Court of Justice in the area of EU Citizenship, free movement and cross-border welfare rights. Specifically, it contributes to existing Europeanisation research by highlighting the role of politicisation in the implementation process. The empirical case study analyses EU students' free movement and cross-border welfare rights in England, based on an original data collection of newspaper articles, semi-structured expert interviews and policy documents. The analysis thus innovatively combines both quantitative and qualitative analysis of politicisation, explicating an otherwise puzzling ten-years delayed policy change in the English study finance system. Ultimately, the case study is exemplary for the struggle in striking a delicate balance between open borders and sustainable public funds under EU non-discrimination provisions, which many other member states similarly face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the changing socioeconomic status of nongmingong – village-originated informal migrant workers in Chinese cities – by examining how their local welfare rights are conditioned upon individual developmental utilities. In Guangdong Province, which is an exemplary case, the local state has provided a kind of developmental-cum-social citizenship to migrant workers with desirable qualifications. The state achieved this by granting hukou (formalized local citizen status) according to a point-based system that emphasizes qualifications that are considered useful for the local economy and society. Such developmentally contingent local citizenship, despite its inclusionary effect on those eligible, has inevitably amplified the inequalities among migrant workers in the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I offer a foundation for the prima facie idea of a right to welfare based on a neglected aspect of Kant's legal theory: his account of equity rights (aequitas, Billigkeit). I argue that these rights are not the same as the 'moral rights' of current literature, and that they arise as a consequence of systemic injustice. The contribution of this article is twofold: firstly, it provides an analysis and application of Kant's underanalysed and little understood discussion of equity; secondly, it offers an alternative to contemporary accounts of welfare rights as moral rights which can better account for their juridical nature as rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of sexual citizenship has been developed over the past two decades, and its discussion has been expanded to other regions. This article investigates the claiming of rights by non-heterosexuals in Hong Kong to achieve two objectives: to articulate the importance of the rights claiming process, particularly regarding how non-heterosexuals are being transformed to become claimants through rights claims, and to extend the notion of sexual citizenship in East Asia, particularly in the Hong Kong context. The findings show four distinctive characteristics of sexual citizenship in Hong Kong. Non-heterosexuals are found to have faced different struggles and barriers before or during the process of claiming rights, including restricted welfare rights access in various social institutions. Furthermore, the development of sexual citizenship in the Hong Kong local context is found to be limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 'dually open' free movement system has evolved in the European Union (EU), granting EU citizens the right to free movement within the Union as well as cross-border welfare rights. Some scholarly literature and public debates have characterised the system as corrosive to the nationally organised welfare state, which will become a 'magnet' for the European poor. This paper examines how the German and Danish welfare states have responded to the 'dual open' system and its outcomes in terms of EU citizens' take-up rate of non-contributory benefits between 2007 and 2015. We show that the domestic responses were mostly restrictive and that outcomes remained rather stable. Our findings do not support the welfare magnet thesis but instead identify a tendency to a bifurcated social protection system for EU citizens in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tells the story of Pete, a welfare rights adviser who worked his way up to be Assistant Director of Social Services in a Midlands local authority. Pete joined the public sector with a sense of calling and a belief that local government could create positive social change. Over the next 25 years, however, Pete's calling was increasingly challenged as his job and the context in which he worked were transformed. This article focuses on the ways in which Pete navigated the system in an attempt to 'keep the faith', before eventually taking early retirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about the survey research on peace movement in the U.S. The survey research aimed to know the insights of the most active and experienced people like psychologists and historians in the peace research movement about the priority and researchability of peace research questions, team research, and the research-action dichotomy. The questionnaire requires the respondents to identify the most important and most researchable topics in peace movement. It also include issues related to social sciences such as translation of the research findings into policy for the prime importance, where suggestions are emphasized into two categories including psychological variables and sociological ought.

In the debate on children's rights, reference is often made to children's interests but very little attention is paid to what the interests of children actually are, how they come about, and how they contribute to the foundation and understanding of children's rights and to a practice oriented towards these rights. The author explains the complex relationship between children's rights and interests, while illuminating some of its reasons and consequences. Since children's rights are to be understood as human rights, the author takes a more general approach to the political and moral philosophical debate on human rights, in which reference to interests plays an important role. He relates the most important arguments in this debate specifically to children's rights and offers an interest-based theoretical justification of children's rights as agency rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses welfare rights activism on behalf of African American women in New Orleans between 1959 and 1962, particularly concerning legislation known as the suitable home laws, which provided money from the U.S. Social Security Act's welfare provision Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), and active denial by the Louisiana Board of Social Welfare of ADC funding to African American women and children.

The article discusses efforts by groups such as the Georgia Poverty Rights Organization (GPRO) to promote welfare program funding in Georgia during the 1970s. Topics include disputes over state funding of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, the role of black voters in supporting welfare programs, and the work of the groups Atlanta Welfare Rights Organization (AWRO) and Committee of Concerned Agencies (CCA).

The article presents an interview with feminist activist and scholar Silvia Federici. Topics discussed include Federici's views about her book "Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation," the violence of primitive accumulation, and the repression of student movements and defunding of universities in Nigeria as witnessed by Federici. Also discussed are the role of women in creating a society beyond capitalism and the importance of the welfare rights movement.

Even though the role of courts to enforce economic, social and cultural rights through structural remedies is well established, the implementation stage of rulings following successful litigation seems to be an area of research still in the making. In the Global South, certain constitutional courts have taken on such litigation as a way to advance economic and social rights. The Judiciary Power thus became a key actor in the framing and execution of public policies. This paper examines how the Argentine Supreme Court has intervened after 2001 in public policies regarding the enforcement of social security, environmental and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The citizenship jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice has raised hopes for a more social Europe and triggered fierce debates about ‘social tourism’. The article analyses how this case law is applied by EU member state administrations and argues that they are actively containing the Court’s influence. As a result, rather than reconciling the logics of ‘opening’ and ‘closure’, they are heading towards an uneasy coexistence between free movement and exclusive welfare states. The argument here is illustrated with empirical evidence from Austria and Germany. Although both countries have taken different approaches to EU migrants’ residency and social rights, they produce similar effects in practice: increasingly, EU migrants are being tolerated as residents with precarious status without access to minimum subsistence benefits. Ironically, attempts to restrict residency rights have resulted in a temporary extension of EU migrants’ access to welfare in some instances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the work of welfare-rights activists in 1960s and 70s California. These activists were mostly working-class black and some white mothers, and the majority of them were themselves welfare recipients. As welfare recipients, women of color, and working-class people, they faced a wave of policies and ideologies that stigmatized them, policed their behavior, and made receiving benefits increasingly difficult. These policies were but one element of a larger political crisis, wherein the California government stoked racialized and gendered fears in order to shrink the welfare state. Rather than simply acquiesce to this reality, welfare-rights groups in California refused to accept it. Though scholars have studied welfare-rights groups in Washington, D.C., Nevada, New York, and other US states, almost no attention has been given to groups in California. In this article I use state legislation, newspaper articles, organizational records, and archived interviews to illustrate how California's welfare-rights movement challenged anti-welfare policy and ideology. I argue that they did more than simply reject punitive legislation. They emphasized childcare, rebuked middle-class complacency, questioned the primacy of the nuclear family, and dismissed gender roles. In the process, they raised crucial, enduring questions about the nature of economic-justice organizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights regarding the movement to constitutionalise welfare rights. Topics discussed include the economic consequences of the movement, implications of judicial enforcement of welfare rights on civil and political rights, and negative impact of the movement on the poor people.

In this article, I argue that contemporary theories of agonistic democracy offer provocative insights into democratic activism and protest but require a more robust account of intersectional gender to adequately theorize the challenges of disruptive dissent. To this end, I propose an agonistic and feminist account of “dissident citizenship,” the democratic practices of disruption used to problematize and disturb the status quo when formal channels of democratic change are inadequate. My account foregrounds how intersectional gender formations pervade dissident practices, including activists’ ongoing struggles with their critics over their democratic standing and performances of disruption. I illustrate these theoretical claims through a case study of dissident citizenship drawn from U.S. politics, the welfare rights movement of 1966–75. Intersectional gender formations assisted welfare activists in claiming democratic standing as loving, hardworking mothers and in becoming bold dissidents. It was nonetheless exceedingly difficult for the poor, usually minority “militant mamas” to remain intelligible as full citizens when critics rejected their claims as the greediness of “breeders” and “cheaters” and dismissed their democratic disruptions as offensive, violence-causing disorders. Attending to intersectional gender dynamics highlights critical dimensions of democratic contestation that agonistic theories must address more carefully. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the forgotten voices of marginalized feminist mothers—those active in welfare rights groups. These activists were primarily poor single mothers who understood motherhood differently from more mainstream feminists. Whilst they echoed mainstream feminist demands for childcare, they also supported women's right to stay at home with their children, emphasizing the role of the state. This presented a serious class-based critique in a society that increasingly saw stay-at-home motherhood as a middle-class option. This article focuses upon working-class mothers' groups, thus problematizing dominant feminist discourses and developing a more diverse history of second wave feminism in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the potential impact of Brexit on the family and welfare entitlement of EU migrants living in the UK and of UK migrants living in other EU Member States. Whilst the vast majority of those campaigning for the UK to leave the EU (publicly at least) argued in favour of thosealready present in the UK at the time of the referendumhaving their status protected, the government has been considerably less vocal in its support for this outcome. As such, EU migrants living in the UK presently face considerable uncertainty as to their own and their families’ future legal status and entitlement to welfare rights. The article will expose some of the evidential and legal gaps in the assertions made about EU migrants’ socio economic entitlement with a view to providing a more informed, legally accurate appraisal of how the Brexit negotiations could unfold. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article it is argued that parental responsibility offers a weak basis for the protection of children's rights due to its emphasis on (1) responsible parents' determinations of welfare and (2) the concomitant nature of rights to duties. Based on these two premises, courts have often either neglected children's rights, or have subordinated them to the rights of duty-holders (parents) when deciding on matters falling within the scope of parental responsibility. Recently, a third limitation on children's rights has been added: the application of a (non-derogable) right held by the child can now be prevented following an exercise of parental responsibility in circumstances where the child's right would otherwise apply. The argument is therefore made that parental responsibility as applied under English law erodes children's rights, leaving little left but the rhetoric surrounding them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]