The impact of immigration flows on Welfare regimes of Western European countries from 1950's to nowadays.

Résumé du document

It is generally agreed that the regimes of Welfare States are in crisis. Indeed, several factors of our modern societies led the Welfare State regimes into a general crisis which is more or less accentuated by internal reasons within each State. The link between immigration and welfare state regimes has always been difficult to understand. Nevertheless, it is utterly interesting to apprehend how immigration is a phenomenon which reshapes the Welfare States regimes. This phenomenon of reshape did not exclude any type of Welfare regimes theorized by Esping-Anderson. Indeed, the three types of welfare regimes are currently facing significant reforms. The reshaping of these welfare regimes is interesting to understand because the reforms introduced by the governments of each country contributed to redefine the people who can or cannot receive the benefits of welfare states. Thus, this is a system which is totally redefined through its policies. We will see how immigration can reshape the welfare regimes of Western European countries in this document.

Extraits

[...] We could also add the impact of family reunification which led the welfare regimes of these four countries to grant to these non citizens almost the same rights as nationals. Finally, we have to underline that since 2003 the legal immigrants within European countries are granted of the same rights of social security as their citizens peers. Therefore, the way that the States fixed the right to obtain social rights and welfare benefits created a hierarchy of migrant's social rights. [...]

[...] II- The impact of immigration, between exclusion and inclusion: the European dilemma In fact what we could observe through the Western European politics of immigration is that the government on the name of the welfare state regime decided to cut into several parts the kinds of immigrants. Indeed, one major issue is that the applications of asylum seekers increased sensibly because of the end of the Soviet Union. These asylum seekers are seen as unwanted and people who need to beneficiate from the welfare redistributions without contribute to the system. [...]

[...] This high unemployment rate was common to almost all the Continental countries and remained till the early 1970s. Besides, the European construction completely changed the rules within the European continent. Indeed, toward the immigration a new politic emerged in the late 1990's which consisted in control and measure the number of immigrants but also in a way to who whether can or not enter its territory. This politic has the aim to reassure the power of the States which was facing significant issues on these matters of immigrations. [...]

[...] Then, we will see how immigration can reshape the welfare regimes of Western European countries? In that extent, we will focus our essay on a particular period which is from 1950's to nowadays because the welfare regimes in Western Europe appeared in the Second postwar period. Thus, we won't include the immigration flows of the 1930's or even before. Besides, we will take into account only extra-European immigration to four particular European areas which are France, Germany, Scandinavia (especially Sweden) and Britain. [...]

[...] Indeed, the immigrants could work and be seen as participating to the common effort for maintaining the welfare regime. The immigrants began to become newly problematic when the Western European countries had to face the oil crisis in the early 1970's. The policies toward immigration changed and they were not allowed anymore into the territory. In France and other countries, the governments allowed the family reunification in order to respect the claim of immigrants about their right to be gathered. [...]