2020-12, Bochsler, Yann

In contrast to the nexus between welfare and migration control, the link between migration and poverty (or rather the perception of poverty), has not received the same amount of political interest, but also public and scholarly attention. Yet, there are multiple ways in which migrants are rendered or perceived as poor in receiving states after having migrated. Hence, this special issue addresses the intersection of migration and poverty. The contributions cover various socio-legal, political and discursive aspects of how state institutions and non-state agencies address, and how poor citizens and migrant individuals in the broadest sense deal with, precariousness and discrimination in the states where they have settled or within which they have moved. In public and political discourse, migrant individuals are often portrayed as underserving, needy and dependent on the ‘receiving states’. Yet, what is often overlooked is how this assumed dependency is constructed by policies and laws, encouraged by media practices and everyday street-level implementation, to the degree that it demonises the foreign ‘other’, accused of misusing welfare assistance. At the same time, we find similar framings regarding marginalised citizens, such as welfare recipients, which discloses the moral character of social policies and a hierarchy of deservingness-recognition. Within the special issue, we critically discuss how such representations and policy mechanisms allow for the discriminatory circumscription of rights and services of the ‘poor’ and migrants that are deeply embedded in welfare chauvinist attitudes, causing significant control and surveillance by the state.

2020-12, Bochsler, Yann

The present research deals with the policies directed at young adults in social welfare without vocational training (YAS) and the way their implementation is perceived by implementers themselves as well as by the YAS. In Switzerland, there is currently an ongoing strategical shift in the policy field of youth policies with a renewed emphasis on educational integration as a first and primary integration step. This policy shift has implications for the strategical scope of the cantonal administration. The renewed emphasis on “education first” as a guideline dictates an approach which follows an economic logic. Building on collected data within cantonal administrations (Basel-City and Geneva) and encounters with YAS, this paper discusses the narratives of these policies and their moral justifications.