About the project

Migration of EU citizens within the EU is sometimes perceived as unproblematic, since EU citizens enjoy a wide range of rights in relation to work and welfare protection in all EU member states. However, the presence of homeless EU migrants in many western European cities suggest that not all EU migrants are able to access social security provisions in their destination country.

This PhD project explores the situation of EU migrants with severely limited access to welfare protection and the role diaconal organizations assume in responding to the needs of these migrants. The study addresses a gap in the literature about the interrelations between transnational migration, access to welfare provision and social exclusion in the EU context. It is a comparative study based on ethnographic fieldwork including qualitative interviews with EU migrants and personnel of diaconal institutions working with EU migrants in Liverpool (United Kingdom) and Oslo (Norway). Main research questions are: How is social exclusion among EU migrants related to their migration status? and How are Diaconal institutions viewing their role in responding to “wholes” in the “European safety net”?

The study explores social citizenship of vulnerable EU migrants in the context of differing welfare regimes, welfare pluralism, retreating welfare states and increasingly hostile migration regimes as well as the welfare provision of diaconal institutions to vulnerable EU migrants in the context of diaconal values and practices. It aims at contributing to the theoretical discussion of the role of diaconal work in an age of migration and welfare pluralism.

Background

European Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations

University of Stavanger and University of Oldenburg

Research group

MIGREL Migration, Religion and Transnational Relations