Welfare Work with Immigrants and Refugees in a Social Democratic Welfare State provides an ambiguous yet disturbing portrait of the inner workings of the Danish welfare state and its implications in a context of globalisation and migration. Through a sociological interview-study with welfare workers, this book describes how processes of othering are undercurrents of welfare work. The processes construct immigrants and refugees as a kind of people who are not only culturally different but also behind, deficient and weak, and thus assigned the potential to benefit from welfare work. These processes are designated to advance a racial welfare dynamic of remedial circularity which keeps the immigrant and refugee on the threshold of modern living and democracy. It is thus depicted how welfare work is intertwined not with a biological framework but with a cultural framework naturalising and ontologising cultural differences. The book examines how welfare work tends to appreciate immigrants and refugees as dislocated people with a cultural lack and how it abides by the dictums of civilising expansions and humanitarian imperialism within the modern state. This book will be useful for every scholar who wants to reconsider and think differently about how the welfare state is going to proceed in a global society.

This book provides a major new examination of the current dilemmas of liberal anti-racist policies in European societies, linking two discourses that are normally quite separate in social science: immigration and ethnic relations research on the one hand, and the political economy of the welfare state on the other. The authors rephrase Gunnar Myrdal's questions in An American Dilemma with reference to Europe's current dual crisis - that of the established welfare statefacing a declining capacity to maintain equity, and that of the nation state unable to accommodate incremental ethnic diversity. They compare developments across the European Union with the contemporary US experience of poverty, race, and class. They highlight the major moral-political dilemma emerging acrossthe EU out of the discord between declared ideals of citizenship and actual exclusion from civil, political, and social rights. Pursuing this overall European predicament, the authors provide a critical scrutiny of the EU's growing policy involvement in the fields of international migration, integration, discrimination, and racism. They relate current policy issues to overall processes of economic integration and efforts to develop a European 'social dimension'. Drawing on case-study analysisof migration, the changing welfare state, and labour markets in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, the book charts the immense variety of Europe's social and political landscape. Trends of divergence and convergence between single countries are related to the European Union's emerging policies fordiversity and social inclusion. It is, among other things, the plurality of national histories and contemporary trajectories that makes the European Union's predicament of migration, welfare, and citizenship different from the American experience. These reasons also account in part for why it is exceedingly difficult to advance concerted and consistent approaches to one of the most pressing policy issues of our time.Very few of the existing sociological texts which compare different European societies on specific topics are accessible to a broad range of scholars and students. The European Societies series will help to fill this gap in the literature, and attempt to answer questions such as: Is there really such a thing as a 'European model' of society? Do the economic and political integration processes of the European Union also implyconvergence in more general aspects of social life, such a family or religious behaviour? What do the societies of Western Europe have in common with those further to the East?This series will cover the main social institutions, although not every author will cover the full range of European countries. As well as surveying existing knowledge in a manner useful to students, each book will also seek to contribute to our growing knowledge of what remains in many respects a sociologically unknown continent. The series editor is Colin Crouch.

This book explores the historical development of post-war immigration politics in Norway, Sweden and Denmark from the perspective of the welfare state, examining how welfare states with high ambitions, generous and inclusive welfare schemes and a strong sense of egalitarianism cope with the pressures of immigration and growing diversities.

Welfare States and Immigrant Rights deals with the impact of welfare states on immigrants' social rights, economic well-being and social inclusion, and it offers the first systematic comparison of immigrants' social rights across welfare states. To study immigrants' social rights the author develops an analytical framework that focuses on the interplay between 1) the type of welfare state regime, 2) forms of entry, or entry categories, and 3) the incorporation regime regulating the inclusion or exclusion of immigrants. The book maps out the development of immigrants' social rights from the early postwar period until around 2010 in six countries representing different welfare state regimes: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, and Denmark. Part I addresses three major issues. The first is how inclusive or exclusionary welfare state policies are in relation to immigrants, and especially how the type of welfare state and incorporation regime affect their social rights. The second issue concerns changes in immigrant rights and the direction of the change: rights extension versus rights contraction. The third issue is how immigrants' social rights compare to those of citizens. Part II shifts from policies affecting immigrant rights to the politics of the policies. It examines the politics of inclusion and exclusion in the six countries, focusing on social rights extension and contraction and changes in the policy dimensions of the incorporation regime that impinge on immigrant rights.

This book presents a critical account of how citizenship unfolds among socially marginalised groups in democratic welfare states. Legal, political and sociological perspectives are applied to offer an assessment of the extent and depth of citizenship for marginalised groups in countries which are expected to offer their members a highly inclusive form of citizenship. The book studies the legal and political status of members of a nation-state, and analyses how this is followed up in practice, by examining the subjective feelings of membership, belonging or identity, as well as opportunities to participate actively and be included in different areas of society. Showing how the welfare state and society treat citizens at risk of social exclusion and offering new insights into the conceptual interconnection between citizenship, social exclusion, and the democratic welfare state, the book will be of interest to all scholars, students and academics of social policy, social work and public policy.

The Swedish welfare state finds itself in the middle of two major upheavals: The impact of technology and immigration. Having taken in more refugees per capita than most other countries, the pillars of the welfare state are being shaken. Digital technologies are set to strengthen already existing trends towards job and wage polarization. This book explores how these trends are more pronounced due to the rigidity of the labor market and the comprehensiveness of tax-financed welfare services.