19.04.2019

Institutskolloquium: Freedom of Movement and Social Assistance

Cecilia Bruzelius & Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, Mittwoch, 24. April 2019, 16:00 c.t. – 18:00 Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Raum 124

EU citizens’ fundamental right to free movement has increasingly come to be contested across EU member states. This reflects, amongst other things, concerns arising from perceived and actual social pressures. In Germany, which is one of the Member States with the highest net-immigration of EU citizens, intra-EU migration and its perceived and actual impacts has made issues such as EU citizens’ access to social benefits and local social challenges (e.g. homelessness) salient political issues. Such tensions result from the combination of free movement rights and cross-border social entitlements:  whilst supra-national law has created formal social rights for internal movers, substantive social rights remain dependent on national welfare states. This is not unique to the EU. Rather, pressures arising from devolved welfare provision and internal free movement are inherent features of federations. A closer study of such dynamics in comparable federations may thus contribute to a better understanding of EU integration and in particular its social policy dimension.

Cecilia Bruzelius is a Post-doctoral Researcher (Akademische Rätin a.Z.) in the Research Unit Comparative Public Policy, Institute of Political Science, at the University of Tübingen.

Martin Seeleib-Kaiser is Professor of Comparative Public Policy at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Tübingen.