(Un)equal services, (un)equal opportunities

Cities at the forefront of migrant protection

While in recent years, national-level welfare regimes have been curbing migrants’ social rights, some cities have been at the forefront of migrant protection. Much attention has been paid to the benefits of local-level immigrant policies. Labelled as the ‘local’ or ‘urban’ turn,’ the decentralisation of immigrant policies and the increased role of local actors has been on the public and academic agenda. Cities are known to be more efficient and innovative in responding to the needs of marginalised communities than central governments, which instead curbed migrants’ social rights. Less attention has been given to the policies operating on the ground, migrants' experience with street-level bureaucrats, and the risks of shifting policies to the local levels.

Governance of ‘Urban Marginality’

Our study addresses these gaps using an analytical framework of local welfare systems (LWS). We assess the LWS responses to the needs of marginalised urban migrants in four Global North top-scale migrant-destination cities: Stockholm, Berlin, London and New York. We do that by analysing the supply of welfare resources (designed at a central level and implemented locally or designed and implemented locally) in response to specific local demands. We also identify opportunities and risks in the governance of ‘urban marginality’ (Wacquant, 2014). Our analysis is based on comparative qualitative research, including 95 interviews with marginalised migrants (N=50), service providers (N=30) and representatives of other stakeholders involved in LWS (N=15). Marginalised migrants selected for the study were low-income foreign-born residents all of Polish origin (to keep data comparability), experiencing other intersecting marginalisations such as irregular status (N=11), homelessness (N=5), performing low-wage jobs (N=13), being underemployed (N=14) or having limited host country language skills (N=20).

Policies on the ground in migrants’ experiences

Study participants inquired about their on-the-ground experiences with accessing and utilising different welfare services and listed the following challenges:

• Exclusive access to the generous LWSs

Irregular participants struggling with homelessness interviewed in Stockholm frequently stressed how they could not access the welfare system. Only documented migrants (holders of Sweden's Personnummer) were granted access to the generous Swedish welfare system. At the same time, they narrated about bureaucratic barriers built into the system to become documented.

• Language barriers

Participants frequently mentioned language barriers to accessing and utilising services in Berlin and Stockholm. Those interviewed in Berlin needed help with information on available services provided only in German. In addition, the German language used in the administrative offices was viewed by study participants as very formal and difficult to understand, even for those with intermediate or reasonable knowledge.

• Punitive, means-tested welfare

Participants interviewed in London and NYC who utilised welfare resources frequently mentioned restrictive conditions to access and keep on receiving services, as well as easy ways to lose them. In Berlin, they said punitive administrative machines to penalise and discipline marginalised welfare clients. The punitive nature of the system was also expressed through micro-aggressions when encountering employed welfare agencies and how the offices were organised, including the long waiting time to establish eligibility and receive services.

• Services inadequate to migrants’ needs

Some participants interviewed in London and NYC struggled financially even after receiving welfare services and being employed. The benefits were too low for migrants to support themselves; as a result, some were forced to use other resources, such as support from relatives. Documented low-income participants interviewed in London fortunate enough to be offered social housing struggled to accept it when on the fair-away outskirts of cities. In NYC, unaffordable housing was the major challenge. In London, a theme that emerged in conversations with homeless migrants was return tickets offered to them instead of assistance. The most marginalised homeless migrants interviewed in Stockholm narrated about insufficient access to shelters and described lotteries put in place to determine who can access the resource. In Berlin, participants struggled with inadequate meeting times with service providers, such as during working hours.

• Under- and unstable funding

The central theme that emerged from conversations with service providers in the most decentralised LWSs (NYC & London) was underfunding and unstable funding for immigrant services. This resulted in constant changes in programs offered, high caseload and high staff turnover due to low wages and burnout.

• Fragmented services challenging to navigate

Participants interviewed in NYC and London, more so than in Stockholm or Berlin, narrated about services being challenging to navigate and fragmented. In particular, they needed help learning what support they were eligible for and where to access it. They described the system as complicated and confusing. Undocumented and homeless migrants, not only in NYC and London but also in Stockholm, struggled with accessing accurate information or were required to commute across the cities to receive various forms of help (shelter, bath, food, prescriptions).

• Unequal quality of services

In the most decentralised & privatised LWSs, services were subcontracted to multiple non- and for-profit organisations and other providers (Berlin, London, NYC), resulting in poor administrative control over service implementation and varying quality of services offered in various city districts. Participants also mentioned the deteriorating service quality, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unequal services produce unequal opportunities

Our results indicate that exclusive and unequal services produce unequal opportunities for migrants to overcome their material hardship and address basic needs. They point to the role of welfare policies in shaping the life paths of migrants and strengthening the division between “deserving” and “undeserving migrants”. We argue that the tendency to shift the responsibility for protecting migrants' social rights from the national to the local level brings local authorities more autonomy and control and stimulates social innovations. However, it also generates overlooked risks, such as accelerated privatisation of social services that, combined with underfunding, negatively impact cities' capabilities to respond to the needs of marginalised migrants. In particular, cities representing liberal welfare regimes (NYC, London) offer privatised, fragmented and difficult-to-navigate services of unequal quality and consequently perpetuate (un)equal opportunities for marginalised migrants.

However, more generous and less privatised regimes (Stockholm, Berlin) make their services less accessible and inclusive for migrants and divide people into varying categories of deserving and undeserving support.

The study indicates that adverse outcomes of policy decentralisation can be mitigated by more considerable social expenditure, an absorbent labour market and the creation of more inclusive migrant policies.