by Citizens' Income Trust | Oct 13, 2012 | Opinion
Emma Carmel, Alfio Cerami and Theodoros Papadopoulos (eds), Migration and Welfare in the New Europe: Social protection and the challenges of integration, Policy Press, 2011, xiv + 261 pp, hbk, 1 847 42644 4, £70
The introductory chapter of this timely edited collection outlines the issues to be discussed throughout: policy combinations, institutions and political structures, and the resulting integration and inclusion of migrants. This is followed by a discussion of the role of emotions, beliefs, preferences and opportunities in policy-making.
The first part of the book contains chapters on the differences between different national migrant integration regimes (always the result of different political economics of labour and welfare); on the European Union’s attempt at a coherent migration policy which links utility, security and integration policies; on the contradiction between the right to emigrate and a destination country’s ability to deny entry (meaning that we need a new European migration morality); and on the causes of migration and of different degrees of labour market integration.
The second part contains studies of migration and social protection policies in different EU countries. In Italy, the relative importance of social protection provided to employees in large companies disadvantages migrants, who tend to work in smaller companies. Migrants are also disadvantaged by their weaker position in relation to welfare rights and their security of residence. Germany practises differential inclusion, with guest workers the least included, second-generation German-born people somewhat more included, and ethnic German repatriates the most included. The social security regime, being based largely on contribution records, disadvantages migrants. In Hungary, EU accession has added new elements to an already complex migration pattern.
The chapter on Finland contains the most detailed study of a social security system and its relationship to migration. In Finland’s case residency is a more important criterion than employment status or length of labour market participation. Because immigrants often don’t achieve rights to residency, their access to the main social security provisions remains employment-based and thus precarious, leaving them reliant on a low-level means-tested safety net.
The chapter on the UK, accurately entitled ‘wilful negligence … the absence of social protection in the UK,’ details UK immigrants’ lack of access to the labour market and to social security benefits, and also a detention regime which includes the incarceration of children. The UK has a long history of both permanent and temporary immigration, which has resulted in complex and differentiated labour market patterns. It’s a pity that a detailed case study doesn’t include a section on immigrants’ social security experiences. What does emerge is a picture of insecure recent immigrants and of exploited migrant workers.
The final section of the book integrates into an understanding of migrant experience of a number of disparate cultural and political factors, and here the UK’s multicultural policies fare rather better than our treatment of illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers awaiting determinations of their status. The first chapter in this section asks that welfare right should be viewed in the context of each cultural situation; the second studies the influence of urban, sub-national policy actors; and the third compares Israel’s positive attempts to integrate (certain groups of) immigrants with Europe’s more patchy experience.
The concluding chapter finds social security regulations to be discriminating, and it puts to us the challenge of creating ‘inclusion, integration and social protection’ (p.253) for migrants across Europe. Advocates of a Citizen’s Income approach to benefits reform will recognise this as a challenge which a Citizen’s Income would meet, but only if a Citizen’s Income is to be paid to every current resident, including new arrivals.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Oct 12, 2012 | Research
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published a new report, Does the tax and benefit system create a ‘couple penalty’? ‘The use of the MIS [Minimum Income Standard] scale, which uses research into minimum living costs to show greater economies of living in a couple than the official equivalence scales, suggests that separation penalties are larger and couple penalties smaller than those scales would suggest. Indeed, it shows no case of significant couple penalty other than in the scenario where the absent parent is able to live cheaply in social housing. Moreover, even the official scale used by the Government (the OECD scale) does not show a clear-cut economic advantage for families on low earnings to split up. In the single earner cases shown here, it shows a couple penalty in one scenario, a separation penalty in three scenarios and no difference in the other three. On the other hand, for a couple with two earners, it shows a substantial couple penalty in all but one of the five scenarios looked at here. So an in-work couple penalty can be identified for a particular group of couples on a particular set of assumptions.’ (p.29).
www.jrf.org.uk/publications/tax-and-benefit-couple-penalty
by Citizens' Income Trust | Oct 11, 2012 | Research
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published a report, Reforming Council Tax Benefit, which reviews the Government’s plan to localise Council Tax Benefit: ‘Universal Credit is intended to simplify the benefit system by reducing the number of different benefits that claimants and administrators must contend with. Keeping council tax support (the means-tested benefit with the largest number of recipients) separate – and indeed allowing it to vary across the country – severely undermines this simplification. Universal Credit is also intended to rationalise work incentives by replacing a jumble of overlapping means tests with a single one, ensuring that overall effective tax rates cannot rise too high. Again, separate means tests for council tax support could undermine this, with the potential to reintroduce some of the extremely weak work incentives that Universal Credit was supposed to eliminate. It is difficult to think of reasons why the government’s original plan to integrate CTB into Universal Credit was inferior to what is now being proposed’ (pp.8-9). ‘Achieving coherence between council tax rebates and Universal Credit is complex. The need to make the new rebates fit with Universal Credit makes local authorities’ task of designing schemes, already a difficult challenge given the tight timescale, into a truly formidable one. There is nothing in the Universal Credit system that will make it straightforward to identify those who should be passported onto a full council tax rebate. That could make running a council tax rebate scheme based closely on the current system extremely challenging for local authorities … the advantages of localisation seem to be strongly outweighed by the disadvantages, particularly in the context of the welcome introduction of Universal Credit’. (p.107)
www.ifs.org.uk/publications/6183
by Citizens' Income Trust | Oct 10, 2012 | Research
The World Bank has published a report, The Cash Dividend: The rise of cash transfer programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, by Marito Garcia and Charity M. T. Moore. The authors conclude: ‘Much can already be learned from Sub-Saharan Africa’s experience with cash transfer programs. Evaluations of unconditional programs have found significant impacts on household food consumption (for instance, Miller, Tsoka, and Mchinji Evaluation Team 2007 for Malawi’s Social Cash Transfer Program; Soares and Teixeira 2010 for Mozambique’s Food Subsidy Program); nonfood consumption (for instance, RHVP 2009 for Zambia’s Social Cash Transfer); and children’s nutrition and education (including Agüero, Carter, and Woolard 2007 and Williams 2007 for South Africa’s Child Support Grant). A recent experimental evaluation found that a program for adolescent girls conditioned on their school attendance improved enrollment, attendance, and test scores in Malawi. Unconditional transfers in the same program decreased early marriage and pregnancy among girls who had already dropped out of school.’ (p.8).
https://bit.ly/ct4SSA
by Citizens' Income Trust | Oct 9, 2012 | News
On the 30th May 2012 the General Conference of the International Labour Organization reaffirmed that the right to social security is a human right and recommended that member countries should ‘establish and maintain … social protection floors … Schemes providing such benefits may include universal benefit schemes, social insurance schemes, social assistance schemes, negative income tax schemes, … .’
For more information see: www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_norm/—relconf/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_183326.pdf
