Brexit and domestic borders: lessons from the unspoken rules of citizenship

Rachel Humphris

Whether you’re a leaver or a remainer it is difficult to deny Brexit has had dire consequences for race relations in the UK. Roma are no exception. Families identified as Roma have had a treacherous path to UK citizenship, often despite (or even because of) EU accession rules.

Regardless of legal migration status, many Roma in the UK have had their intimate lives laid bare and opened to scrutiny in order to assess whether they ‘deserve’ to be here. The shifting criteria of ‘deservingness’ are likely to become even more complicated – and challenging to navigate – post-Brexit. Already, the deepening consequences of austerity, with its continual outsourcing of frontline work exacerbating gaps in social support, rising fees for citizenship procedures, and increasingly complex legal statuses within the UK’s ‘hostile/compliant environment’, create bewildering constellations of regulations and processes.

My new book ‘Home-land’ shows how – in the face of regulatory incoherence – the importance of individual discretion and value judgements take centre-stage. For the Roma families I lived with over the course of a year during the lifting of EU accession regulations, the consequences were stark.

Combining first-hand research, detailed analysis and compelling individual stories, I show how apparently legal distinctions were replaced with the surveillance of intimate family relations and domestic arrangements as the criteria on which legal status and belonging was judged. For many (but especially women), their ability – or otherwise – to perform ‘deservingness’ in their own homes, could be life-changing. The book’s insights provide profound lessons for a post-Brexit, late-austerity UK, whatever Brexit may turn out to mean.

‘Home-land’ is based on extensive fieldwork with Roma families living in Luton. Luton, like many places in the UK, felt the hit of the financial crisis leading to empty shops in the high street and rising unemployment. Austerity was sharply felt in local government. Dramatic cuts to local services contrasted with increasing demand for support from residents including high unemployment, exacerbated by declining business rates. The result was the collapse of support services and NGOs. Children’s services were left to bear the brunt of supporting families, while their frontline staff had limited resource or training to deal with the complicated legal statuses of new migrants. Frontline workers tried their best, but quickly had to choose who to support – and how. Under extreme pressure from an audit culture, a habit of formal and informal ‘home visits’ (sometimes going on late into the evening) became the primary mode of engaging these families.

These home visits could put extreme stress on Roma families, already facing many personal and domestic challenges. In one example featured in ‘Home-land’, we follow a young mother called Cristina preparing for a home visit. She lives in private-rented slum housing in Luton with broken doors, windows, damp, rats and leaking roof. From the time she wakes up at 7am Cristina cleans the house. She tidies away the signs that there is another family sleeping in the downstairs room (to help her family pay the rent). She dresses herself and the children in the clothes they wear for church and she gets toys that were in a cupboard upstairs and throws them around the room, placing her children amongst them to create the ‘right kind’ of mess. When the Children’s Centre officials arrive, her demeanour changes suddenly from frantic to a show of stillness, calmness and quiet. When the women leave, she flops down onto the sofa, completely exhausted.

It was at times like this, heard many times from mothers, that they felt a strong reaction: they didn’t want people coming and looking at their kids. Who would? Mothers were afraid their children would be taken into care. Rumours ran rampant throughout families. Families could find themselves faced with the decision to move from the area with their children, or lose their children altogether. Home visits were their only source of securing support from local services; but also came with the weight of surveillance and the potential to become a site of ‘bordering’.

These stories need to be heard, and need to be thought about at all levels of policy-making and research. Already, legal migration statuses are becoming increasingly complex. Brexit seems unlikely to reverse the trend. Austerity is still biting hard; and the privatisation of services is creating complex relationships in frontline provision. Marginalised families, like the Roma in Luton, either fall through the gaps or are subject to compassionate bordering in their homes from frontline workers, who often have the best of intentions but are in a harsh and broken system. In this context, the most mundane everyday actions in the home become crucial for how families can secure a safe status in the home-land. As we prepare for troubled post-Brexit times, ‘Home-Land’ raises fundamental questions about the types of homes – and the type of home-land – we want.

Home-Land, by Rachel Humphris is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £64.00 or get the EPUB for £21.59.

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50 Facts Everyone Should Know About Crime and Punishment in Britain

Did you know that, contrary to public belief, in the UK a life sentence does last for life? And that capital punishment in the UK was abolished for murder in 1965 but the Death Penalty was a legally defined punishment as late as 1998?

50 Facts Everyone Should Know About Crime and Punishment in Britain, written by leading experts, presents 50 key facts related to crime and criminal justice policy in Britain.

The editors James Treadwell and Adam Lynes talk about the inception of the book and what inspired them to write it in this excerpt from the introduction:

“Upon embarking on this journey of compiling facts about crime-related matters from contemporary issues in prisons to crime and its victims, a quote from one of the earliest pioneers in academic populism, Carl Sagan came to mind:

We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. (Carl Sagan (1980) Cosmos: a Personal Voyage, Episode 1).

Clearly, Sagan was framing this eloquent statement around the scientific pursuit for knowledge about the Universe and our place within it, and not about crime per se. This book is indeed focused on the topic of crime and criminal justice, yet Sagan’s words provide an important reminder that this assortment of ‘facts’ consists of countless voices – each trying to influence and shape how we perceive crime, criminals and its victims, while attempting not to drown and be silenced by all the others.

‘Facts’ can be myth busting or truth revealing. The term ‘fact’ can, of course, have different meanings in different contexts: a fact may sometimes have been presented as an absolute fact (a truth that is uncontested) or as a relative fact, and yet, what constitutes the parameters of truth or fact can be contested in all realms. The language of criminology and academia necessarily often deals in caveats, where estimates, approximates, averages and suggestions are cautiously preferred to grand and sweeping claims that might be proven falsehoods.

Crime is also an emotive subject, where values, morals, ethics, beliefs, views and opinions sit alongside fact. What constitutes a fact in criminology is rightly often contested. Hence we have used the term ‘facts’ here not to introduce the readers to absolute or uncontested topics, but rather to attempt to frame a broad discussion that involves 50 academics, some well established, some earlier in their careers, writing accessibly on issues on which they are knowledgeable.

The text is in many ways a provocation. It was conceived as an attempt to give readers an accessible introduction to the topics of crime and punishment in Britain today. What appears here are several discussions around crime and the criminal justice system, where the term ‘fact’ is broadly used to take accepted wisdom and then discuss that critically in a bid to get readers to think more deeply about issues. Yet how to structure this is, in and of itself, not unproblematic.

The Ministry of Justice is a ministerial department of the British government, and while historically people may have asserted that ‘British justice is the finest in the world’, the organisation of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland into separate legal systems already means that to talk of crime in Britain is problematic. That does not stop the term being used. For example, Former Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer lamented in February 2018 in the Guardian that ‘British justice is in flames. The MoJ’s fiddling is criminal’ (Falconer, 2018).

Yet perhaps our first fact ought to be that British justice is problematic.

We have attempted to be accurate, presenting material so as to be clear, but the spirit of this text is one that encourages critical engagement, and to encourage the reader not to simply accept at face value what is claimed as fact. In particular, the social sciences are often presented as dealing with facts, when in reality they are a framework for interpreting, systemising and predicting future outcomes based on empirical observations…

What we do know is that, in basing the contributions here on research and data, the 50 contributing authors present facts that will give the reader a better knowledge of the contemporary place of crime and control in Britain. It will better equip you reader with imagination and scepticism, and a basic knowledge that will aid you to appraise and critically evaluate the claims you hear being made about crime. We hope you enjoy it.”

 

50 Facts Everyone Should Know about Crime and Punishment in Britain, edited by James Treadwell and Adam Lynes is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £10.39.

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Valuing young people, valuing grassroots youth work

Louise Doherty and Tania de St Croix

Young people say that more youth centres would make them safer. Looking back on research for ‘Grassroots youth work: Policy, passion and resistance in practice’, Tania de St Croix and Louise Doherty argue for a renewed policy commitment to youth work as a youth-centred educational practice – one where the focus is on young people themselves, not on short-term results and pre-defined outcomes (in relation to knife crime or anything else).

When the Youth Violence Commission asked young people “If there was one thing you could change that you think would make young people safer, what would it be?”, the most popular response was the provision of more local youth centres and activities. This wish sits starkly against a backdrop of relentless cuts, closures and redundancies in the youth work sector, with council spending cut from £650 million in 2010/11 to £390 million in 2016/17 (LGA, 2018). It would be simplistic to claim that youth clubs prevent knife crime, which is rooted in a grossly unequal society and the vilification and marginalisation of working class and minority ethnic young people. Yet it has never been clearer that young people need to know they are valued; they need adults they can trust, who will challenge and support them; and they need spaces where they can build positive peer and community relations and a feeling of belonging.

There are tentative signs of a rekindling of interest in youth work amongst policy makers in England (youth policy in the UK is devolved across the four Nations). In August 2018, the Civil Society Strategy recognised “the transformational impact that youth services and trained youth workers can have, especially for young people facing multiple barriers or disadvantage”. In October 2018, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Youth Affairs recommended reinvestment in youth work as an educational process (not as a way of ‘fixing problems’). Meanwhile, the Labour Party have pledged to reinvest in youth services and ring-fence local budgets.

Yet, as researchers who are also experienced and qualified youth workers, we are cautious about this renewed interest in our sector. This is partly because a meaningful policy and funding commitment is yet to emerge; it is also because of a tension at the heart of youth work and its place in policy. Too often, youth work as a response to ‘crisis’ has formalised the nature of our practice, removing the elements that young people most value – its engagement with them on their own terms rather than because they are seen as ‘at risk’ or ‘risky’.

The study underpinning the book Grassroots youth work found that the threat to youth work came both from cuts and a longer legacy of neoliberal market imperatives and surveillance cultures shaping public and voluntary services. The part-time and volunteer youth workers in the study were heavily constrained by funding attached to predefined outcomes and bureaucratic monitoring systems. Crime prevention projects that required them to work alongside the police, or to identify young people ‘at risk of involvement in crime’, were particularly problematic and counter-productive, because they brought youth workers into the realm of surveillance and ‘the establishment’ in young people’s eyes. ‘Proving’ (rather than critically reflecting on) their work wasted money and effort, as they were compelled to focus on meeting immediate targets at the expense of professional judgements and long-term face-to-face practice.

Despite these challenges, the study found evidence of the survival and thriving of grassroots approaches to youth work, based on informal learning through conversations, activities and relationships, chosen by young people in their leisure time. Since the book was written, however, the cuts have continued apace; many of the workers interviewed have lost their jobs and several of their organisations have closed. The confidence of the sector has been undermined by insecurity, leading to professional migration to other fields of labour. We are now in an even more challenging and precarious situation than we were when the book was published in 2016.

Any reinvestment – whilst welcome – must recognise that youth work’s very existence as an educational and professional endeavour has been eroded. Courses for the training of professional youth and community workers have been dismantled across the country, as universities (themselves acting on market pressures) have closed courses or redirected students towards social work and targeted interventions. Staff and managers with decades of experience have been made redundant or accepted early retirement, often feeling burnt out, disillusioned and let down; many are reluctant to return. Those who remain are employed on increasingly precarious contracts, rarely on union-negotiated terms and conditions. And youth work buildings once in community ownership have been sold off to address council and voluntary sector deficits.

We don’t want these negatives to over-shadow the passion and commitment of youth workers and volunteers, operating in extremely challenging circumstances; one of the reasons for writing the book in the first place was to recognise challenges while celebrating youth work. Yet we want to emphasise that policy support for youth work must aim to rebuild the confidence and competence of the sector. It must also avoid demanding short-term results, and recognise the nature and value of youth work as a skilled practice that operates on young people’s terms, whoever they are and whatever issues they want to bring.

We are currently in the first year of a new three-year research project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which investigates the evaluation of youth work. We are looking at how a new emphasis on ‘impact’ is shaping the everyday practice and overall provision of services; how evaluation and accountability processes are experienced on the ground; and how these mechanisms might look if they were rooted in the needs and perspectives of young people and youth workers in their local contexts. Whilst the early stages of the fieldwork are hopeful in terms of identifying youth work organisations that have survived, the shape of renewed policy interest in youth work remains unformed. Our research seeks to interact with youth workers and young people to support what could be a renaissance of the practice at a time when youth work is needed more than ever.

Grassroots Youth Work by Tania De St Croix is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £19.19.

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What being happier together would actually look like

By Sam Wren-Lewis, author of The Happiness Problem: Rethinking Individual Success and Societal Progress.

You may not know it, but today is the International Day of Happiness. This celebration takes place on the 20^th March every year, to coincide with the Spring Equinox, and is a modern day tradition that’s been going since 2013, after its official ratification by the UN in 2012. Each year has a different theme, with this year’s theme being “Happier Together”, encouraging people to focus on “what we have in common, rather than what divides us.”

All of which seems fair enough. After all, everyone wants to be happy, right? Happiness researchers and policymakers like to point out that many of the things that make us happy are universal and don’t cost the world – simple things such as spending time with friends and loved ones, getting outside into nature and being physically active. If only we spent more time doing these kinds of ‘happifying’ activities, and less time pursuing financial success and material goods, the world would be a better, greener, healthier and happier place.

“There are a number of serious factors that prevent people from doing the things that make them happy.”

Of course, advocates of happiness also recognise that things are not this simple. There are a number of serious factors that prevent people from doing the things that make them happy. The pressures and demands of daily life are significant. We are lucky if we can find a spare 10 minutes to do some exercise or simply sit still for a while. Busyness and productivity has become the new norm. In fact, even the suggestion that we should focus more on being happier, when we have so many other things we need to do, can seem patronising or offensive.

These concerns point towards a deeper problem with the rhetoric of happiness. Predominantly, the idea of happiness centres around getting things ‘right’ – having the perfect job, relationship, family life, body and mind. Proponents of happiness may be suggesting that we have some of our priorities wrong in this respect – it matters less how much money we have and more how are relationships are going. But they are still emphasising an ideal that is not be so easy to achieve for everyone. For those who live in genuinely threatening environments, for example, how safe is it to get outside more?

“We may all want to be happy. But we do not all face the same conditions and challenges in life.”

We may all want to be happy. But we do not all face the same conditions and challenges in life. By ignoring this fact, the ‘happiness agenda’ risks either being something trivial or something that is only relevant to the privileged few who can take on its recommendations.

This needn’t be the case, however. Instead of downplaying the different conditions and challenges we face in life, we can employ a notion of happiness that takes suffering much more seriously. The idea of happiness does not have to centre around things being just right.

Thinking about happiness can help us realise that we all face numerous challenges and difficulties, and will continue to do so. This is, ultimately, what we have in common. Things are never just right. No matter how much progress we make, we will still be insecure: vulnerable to disappointment, loss and suffering.

“The first step towards being happier together is paying more attention to the different conditions and challenges faced by people across the world.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for individual achievement and societal progress – these are good things. And there’s nothing wrong with trying to be a bit happier, on today of all days. But if we really want to be “Happier Together”, as this year’s International Day of Happiness theme encourages us to, then we must recognise that our common humanity rests on our common vulnerability. The first step towards being happier together is paying more attention to the different conditions and challenges faced by people across the world.

Interestingly, this, somewhat more depressing, way of looking at things has happiness research on its side. We are beginning to understand the psychological benefits of attitudes such as curiosity and compassion. Even if our lives are not perfect, we can pay more attention towards ourselves and our circumstances, including the things we already have. The same goes for the lives of others. Instead of trying to control people’s behaviour, or find quick fixes for all their problems, we can show them compassion and gain a deeper understanding of what they need. Although this is far from living happily ever after, I believe it is what being happier together would actually look like.

The Happiness Problem by Sam Wren-Lewis is available on the Policy Press website. Pre-order here for £10.39.

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Why our fixation on the employment rate masks a more harmful truth

Anthony Lloyd

The latest round of employment figures were recently released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS, 2019).  In it, the number of people in work reached a record high (32.54 million) between September – November 2018.  Furthermore, average earnings increased by 3.3%, the number of vacancies increased, and unemployment is at its lowest level since the early 1970s.  All cause for celebration.

Employment Minister Alok Sharma announced “Our pro-business policies have helped boost private sector employment by 3.8 million since 2010, and as the Resolution Foundation’s latest report shows, the ‘jobs-boom has helped some of the most disadvantaged groups find employment’, providing opportunities across society.” (BBC, 2019).  Surely, reasons to be cheerful in these turbulent times? However, we need to ask a number of critical questions about the real state of UK labour markets and the realities (and harms) associated with “employment”.

First, how accurate is the Labour Force Survey?  Our current fixation on low unemployment is a statistical construction easily rejected on closer inspection.  This sample survey of 100,000 responses categorises employment as working over one hour a week, and unemployment as actively seeking work in the past four weeks and available to start in the next two weeks.  From a low bar to one much higher.  Second, what are the conditions within work?  We clearly have no difficulty in creating jobs (or characterising forms of activity as ‘employment’) but it tells us nothing about the lived reality of (in)stability, (in)security, and experiences of work.

“We may have, statistically speaking, more people in jobs than any time in the last four decades, but there are problematic and harmful realities at play”

In my recent book, The Harms of Work: An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy (Bristol University Press), I consider the reality of life in the insecure, flexible and low-paid service economy.  I observe workplaces and interview employees engaged in retail, call centres, leisure, takeaways, bar work, delivery jobs and other forms of customer-facing roles.  I examine the historical shifts in UK labour markets over recent decades to demonstrate a thorough neoliberal restructuring of working life, away from stability and security, towards competition, flexibility and profitability.  I also utilise emerging theories within ultra-realist criminology and social harm to consider the more problematic aspects of this fundamental transformation.  We may have, statistically speaking, more people in jobs than any time in the last four decades, but there are problematic and harmful realities at play in low-paid service work that are overlooked by positive employment figures.

These problems (and harms) include an absence of stability. Temporary, precarious forms of ‘non-standard’ work include zero-hour contracts and the ‘gig economy’.  Power and flexibility rest with employers, not employees, while workers struggle to plan for the week ahead, devoid of solid grounding upon which to build a life.

“Power and flexibility rest with employers, not employees, while workers struggle to plan for the week ahead, devoid of solid grounding upon which to build a life.”

There is also an absence of protection. Illegal practices such as non-payment of the mandated National Minimum Wage and unpaid ‘work trials’ exploit service economy employees.  The absence of protection also extends to mental ill health as overworked, precarious and stressed employees struggle to get by yet often shoulder the responsibility personally; if only they worked harder, if only they were less ambitious or more realistic, things would not be so bad.

Finally, the absence of ethical responsibility for each other creates problems and harms.  Management bullying, workplace cliques and the active exploitation or sabotage of colleagues pervades organisational cultures built on the neoliberal logic of competition, individualism, entitlement and display. Social relations within a competitive culture and competitive work environments increasingly reflect post-social arrangements and lead to harmful consequences.

I frame much of this behaviour and observation around a notion of ‘social harm’. That’s the prevention of recognition, positive rights and human flourishing caused by the intended and unintended consequences of the normal functioning of consumer capitalism. This system, following its own logic, reshapes organisations, cultures and subjectivities and generates a series of problematic and harmful consequences. Looking at the reality of contemporary working life and labour markets is vital; it’s no longer acceptable to continue celebrating the employment figures and the reduction in unemployment when the reality of the workplaces in which the majority of people are engaged produce such deleterious and damaging consequences.

The Harms of Work by Anthony Lloyd is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £64.00 or get the EPUB for £21.59.

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The subversion of democracy

Henry Tam

Bristol University Press talks to Henry Tam, a leading expert on the threats against democracy and what should be done to counter them.  In addition to his academic work as a political theorist, he was in charge of the Labour government’s policies for civil renewal and community empowerment in the 2000s.

Henry’s new book Whose Government Is It? is out today.

BUP: More and more we hear that leaving people to vote with little understanding of the key issues is a recipe for disasters. Brexit, Trump, the resurgence of the far right – how worried should we be?

HT: There is something rotten indeed with the state of our democracy.  Instead of ensuring people’s informed views and concerns are taken into account by those who govern on their behalf, democracy has been subverted by the use of private wealth and large-scale deception to skew political decisions.  If we allow it to continue, we will keep sliding ever closer towards arbitrary rule.

BUP: But isn’t it true that most people are not interested in politics and they don’t want to be involved with the business of government?

HT: People are not interested in petty party-political squabbles, but very few can be indifferent about how their lives are affected by what those with ruling power may or may not do.

For the last 50 years, around a third or more of adults in the UK and the US have not bothered to vote in elections, because they believed it would not make any difference. Among those who vote, an increasing number are unsure if they can trust politicians, while there is an alarming trend over the last decade with people supporting demagogues who want to impose solutions and do away with public accountability.  We have seen those siding with the radical right winning support in elections and referendums across Europe and America.  And they will use and abuse the power they get to advance their own agenda regardless of the harm it brings to others.

BUP: So what can be done?  Are we to stop people voting for certain groups or policies, and wouldn’t that be anti-democratic itself?

HT: Democracy is not the same as letting people do whatever they want. It is a system for enabling people to cooperate in reaching informed decisions about what should be done collectively for their common good. As long as we allow democracy to be stripped of its true meaning, we leave the door wide open for it to be subverted.

There are a number of actions that need to be taken urgently.  As I set out in my book, Time to Save Democracy, we must have a comprehensive set of reforms that will ensure the minimum conditions for the functioning of democracy are adequately met.  These cover the nine strategic areas of:

♦ Shared Mission: To develop common objectives and cultivate solidarity;

♦ Mutual Respect: To tackle the spread of discriminatory behaviour;

♦Coherent Membership: To clarify terms of citizenship and strengthen people’s sense of belonging;

♦ Collaborative Learning: To raise understanding of what objective enquiry entails;

♦ Critical Re-examination: To counter dogmatism and support open scrutiny of claims;

♦Responsible Communication: To stem the flow of misinformation and promote fact-based discussions;

♦ Participatory Decision-Making: To enable people to shape the decisions that affect them in an informed manner;

♦ Civic Parity: To curb widening inequalities and redistribute power and resources to create a level playing field for fair cooperation;

♦ Public Accountability: To debunk the deregulation mantra and ensure people with power over others are held to account for their actions.

BUP: In the meantime, what can people do in the absence of your proposed reforms?

HT: As we press for these reforms, we should in parallel adopt arrangements and practices, which are known to facilitate cooperative working between state institutions and citizens, improve people’s quality of life, and raise satisfaction with public actions.

In my latest book, Whose Government is it?, I brought together a group of experts who have extensively examined, developed, and implemented participatory and empowerment processes to explain how to establish them in practice.  Their contributions to the book provide the reasons and guidance for developing the capacity for effective democratic engagement, and setting up the appropriate arrangements to sustain informed cooperation.

BUP: What do you say to people who insist that we cannot afford to spend precious time and resources on consulting the public when it is not only costly, but could land us with damaging decisions?

HT: The truth is that we can’t afford to let the gap between citizens and their government widen any further. Token consultation and corrupted participatory practices are of course worse than useless, but that’s precisely why we must focus on getting the necessary framework and suitable approaches in place.  Democracy has the greatest potential, if we work on it, to advance the common good, safeguard personal well-being, and improve efficiencies.  But neglected, its subversion will plunge countless citizens into insecurity and exploitation.

Whose Government Is It? by Henry Tam is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £19.99.

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The Limits of EUrope

Russell Foster, Co-Editor of Global Discourse: EUrope Special Edition.

This post was first published on the Global Discourse blog and can be viewed here.

‘The Limits of EUrope’ special edition of Global Discourse is out this month… Co-editor Russell Foster previews the edition:

‘EUrope’ is changing. In the most visible way this change has recently manifested itself in a drawn-out Brexit which will satisfy no-one, the rise of Euroscepticism and illiberal democracies in response to immigration and integration failures, a potentially resurgent eurozone crisis and continuing economic disparities across the EU, and mounting perceptions of a democratic deficit and the (il)legitimacy of EU institutions. These raise many difficult questions, the hardest of which is – can the EU survive?

Our special edition “The Limits of EUrope” examines the challenges to the EU, and explores possible causes, and theories, of European disintegration. EUrope is changing rapidly – still struggling to respond to the aftershocks of the last few years while facing imminent challenges for the new European Parliament. The next European Commission will inherit an EU racked with political, economic, social, and institutional difficulties, with European populations strongly divided between those who see the Union as their best defence and those whose understandable anger and sense of abandonment are projected onto the EU.

“Free movement, free trade, and a pooling of sovereignty – the dreams of the ECSC’s and EEC’s creators – are not merely a reality; they are a reality which threatens to bring the entire European project crashing down.”

This journal brings together some of the leading scholars of EU studies, as well as experts from policymaking, civil advocacy, and industry, to investigate the serious challenges facing EUrope. For the first time, the post-war promise of democratic, peaceful, prosperous and open political union is not merely threatened, but is perhaps the cause of its own reversal. Free movement, free trade, and a pooling of sovereignty – the dreams of the ECSC’s and EEC’s creators – are not merely a reality; they are a reality which threatens to bring the entire European project crashing down.

Popular consensus holds that mass Euroscepticism was defeated in 2017. But as current events across the EU demonstrate, the root causes of mass dissatisfaction have not gone away. The challenges which have faced EUrope since 2008 have neither been resolved nor disappeared of their own accord, and are likely to return in the future along with new challenges resulting from Brexit, a weaker German government, Macron’s tumbling approval ratings, and a right-wing surge from Andalusia to Saxony. These challenges necessitate new academic models of Europeanisation, de-Europeanisation, and EUrope itself.

This interdisciplinary, international special edition, which draws together a diverse mixture of opinions, beliefs, backgrounds and specialisms, is a first step towards understanding how EUrope’s successes may be the cause of EUrope’s failures. It is now abundantly clear that EUrope will not be the universal political, economic and social model anticipated in the heyday of integration and expansion, and that while EUrope is unlikely to fragment or shatter as was widely predicted during the heights of the Eurozone and Migration crises, future EUrope will be very unpredictable. A new Parliament, a new Commission, the approaching end of the Merkel and Macron administrations, and the unforeseeable aftermath of Brexit – all of these will have major impacts on EUrope. What will be the future of EUrope? This journal offers some of the earliest thoughts.

A long view on Brexit and social policy

by Linda Hantrais

If the UK were no longer in a position to promote or hamper EU social policy from the inside, would the EU be more likely to become a fully-fledged social union? And if the UK were no longer subjected to EU law, what might the implications be for UK social policy?

With Brexit shrouded in uncertainty and likely to remain so for an indeterminate length of time What Brexit means for EU and UK social policy, a new Policy Press Short by Linda Hantrais, out this month, adopts a long view to help readers understand how we got to where we are and how social policy might be reconfigured in the wake of the withdrawal negotiations.

By drawing on a range of disciplinary, conceptual and theoretical approaches, the book explores the complex interconnections between social policy formation, implementation and governance in the EU before, during and after the UK’s membership. The chapters examine the issues, debates and policy challenges facing the EU at different stages in its development, as national interests evolved and polarised under pressures from public and parliamentary opinion, fanned by a persistently hostile British press, and shaped by the personalities, beliefs, judgements and prejudices of politicians and their electorates across the EU.

By documenting how UK governments,  officials and social scientists – often simultaneously – promoted and hampered European social and employment policy, the book seeks to explain why Brexit is unlikely to facilitate close social integration within EU27, and why the impact of Brexit on UK social policy is unlikely to result in a reversal or the unravelling of many decades of social and employment legislation implemented by UK governments after being subjected to rigorous parliamentary scrutiny.

“from the outset, UK governments of whatever political persuasion were never wholly committed to European political and social union.”

The book argues that the seeds of euroscepticism were sown in the 1950s in the social domain before the French voted in a referendum on enlargement in 1972 to accept the candidacies of the UK, Denmark, Ireland and Norway for membership of the European Communities (EC). For the six founding member states, with their corporatist employment-related insurance-based regimes, the social dimension was already controversial and divisive. A recurring theme throughout the book is that, from the outset, UK governments of whatever political persuasion were never wholly committed to European political and social union. The UK was only ever half in and never completely relinquished control over its national social protection system. One of the reasons why successive UK governments supported widening (to 28 members states by 2016) rather than deepening of the EU was that they expected the greater diversity of social, economic and political systems to dilute the federalising ambitions of EU institutions, and to make the chances of the EU becoming a social superstate ever more unrealistic.

The UK’s confrontational approach to European social law-making became most salient during the Thatcher years. The price to pay for the completion of the Single European Act 1986, which the UK government had strongly promoted, and which was designed, drafted and implemented by Arthur Cockfield, the UK’s appointee to the Commission, was the extension of qualified majority voting for health and safety measures. While supporting the overall aim of raising regulatory standards in industry to prevent unfair competition, the UK government opposed further encroachment by European institutions in the social domain, and it fell to John Major to prevent the Social Chapter from becoming the social arm of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, considered by many observers as marking an irrevocable step along the path to Brexit.

By using its blocking powers and opt-outs to protect national sovereignty, the UK forfeited the opportunity to be present at the negotiating table, giving the European Commission a chance to test the widely held belief that the UK was a major force preventing social integration. The evidence was far from conclusive. Other national governments, most notably Denmark and Ireland, also had recourse to opt outs, and they voted in referendums against treaty reforms that they saw as a threat to national sovereignty.

The Labour government under Tony Blair opted into the Social Chapter in 1997, allowing it to become legally binding, and the UK came close to  losing the remnants of its sovereignty in the social domain, when (with Ireland  and Sweden) the government opened its borders to uncontrolled intra-European migration from Central and Eastern Europe in 2004. At the same time, heads of state and government agreed on regulation 883/2004 (implemented in 2010) on the regulatory coordination of social security rights, which laid down the principle of the exportability of benefits. This was one of the issues on which David Cameron was to seek, and obtain, concessions in 2016, but without being able to convince the eurosceptic UK electorate that the EU could be reformed from the inside.

“Due to its half-in half-out position, the UK was, however, less directly affected by the 2010 eurozone and 2015 refugee crises.”

By declining to join Economic and Monetary Union (with Denmark) and to sign up to Schengen (with Ireland), the UK had restrained its ability to influence EU social policy. Due to its half-in half-out position, the UK was, however, less directly affected by the 2010 eurozone and 2015 refugee crises. While UK governments were resisting EU-driven social legislation, officials and advisers to the European Commission were closely involved in formulating soft law alternatives in the social domain, most notably through the open method of coordination. They thereby helped to extend the reach of social policy beyond employment rights by assisting with the introduction of targets, benchmarking, the exchange of good practice and policy learning. In addition, Tony Blair’s government is credited with having ‘uploaded’ Labour’s flexibility and welfare-to-work policies to EU level.

So what does all this mean for EU and UK social policy post-Brexit?

Even as the UK was triggering article 50 in 2017, the European Commission was launching the European Pillar of Social Rights. As at other critical moments in the past, in the context of widespread austerity in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, eurozone and refugee crises and the rise of populist parties, EU institutions were seeking to demonstrate that they were concerned to promote social progress for their increasingly eurosceptic and disillusioned peoples. Brexit had provided a wake-up call for EU27. The Pillar’s provisions applied primarily to the eurozone countries. Recognising the importance of national preferences in the social domain, the Pillar left individual member states to advance at their own pace, an approach long advocated by the UK.

Whether the UK leaves or remains, and deal or no deal, from the undertakings provided in the Prime Minister’s speeches, the withdrawal bill, and statements by the CBI, TUC and European Parliament, it seems unlikely that social legislation on workers’ rights will be diluted for so long as the UK is trading with EU27. The settled status afforded to EU migrants and their families residing in the UK could allay fears, at least in the immediate future, regarding freedom of movement.

Given that the UK needed ten years to join a common market of only six member states, and that Greenland needed three years to negotiate its withdrawal, it could well be a decade or more before we can understand the full meaning of Brexit for EU and UK social policy.

 

Linda Hantrais is author of three editions of Social Policy in the European Union (3^rd edn Palgrave, 2007); Family Policy Matters: European responses to family change (Policy Press, 2004); and International Comparative Research: theory, policy and practice (Palgrave 2009).

 

What Brexit Means for EU and UK Social Policy by Linda Hantrais is available on the Policy Press website. Order here for £11.99.

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Unaccompanied child migrants face dangerous and uncertain journeys

Katie Willis, Sue Clayton & Anna Gupta, authors of Unaccompanied young migrants: Identity, care and justice, look at the reality of immigration for unaccompanied and separated children.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) highlights the desperation felt by the thousands of people who risked their lives travelling to Europe across the Mediterranean or overland in 2018. The report Desperate Journeys: Refugees and migrants arriving in Europe and at Europe’s Borders states that in 2018, while nearly 140,000 people arrived in Greece, Italy and Spain in search of safety and security, an average of 6 people died every day on the Mediterranean crossing. Many more will have died on journeys through North Africa on their way to the coast.

Almost 11,000 of the new arrivals were unaccompanied and separated children (1,922 Greece; 3,536 Italy; 5,500 Spain). While the UNHCR does not state the number of children who died during sea crossings, it is very likely that many children were among those who perished.

“Almost 11,000 of the new arrivals were unaccompanied and separated children”

If unaccompanied young people make it safely to Europe, their exposure to danger and uncertainty remains. UNHCR highlights significant failings in safeguarding unaccompanied children, which leaves them vulnerable to violence and trafficking. In some countries they are kept in poor conditions in reception (and sometimes detention) centres, and there are delays in processing asylum claims or providing young people with information about their rights.

Children who have the right to travel to the UK for family reunification under the European Dublin III regulation frequently face obstacles in having their move to the UK approved. This came to the fore during the demolition of the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp in 2016, but obstacles continue, not least through delays in Home Office decisions, or procedural errors. Similar problems have arisen during the implementation of the ‘Dubs Amendment’ (Section 67c ‘Unaccompanied refugee children relocation and support’ of the 2016 Immigration Act) which aims to resettle 480 unaccompanied children from elsewhere in Europe, in the UK.

“For unaccompanied young people, their status as a migrant is often prioritised over their status as a child”

Children who arrive in the UK seeking asylum qualify for protection under international conventions and law because of their status as children, but in reality many are not offered or given that security and care. The “best interests” principle stresses the importance of making decisions which are in the best interests of the child, but this is frequently ignored. In a context of increased nationalism and suspicion of migrants, UK government policy has been creating a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants. For unaccompanied young people, their status as a migrant is often prioritised over their status as a child, going against international conventions to which the UK is a signatory.

If children’s asylum claims are denied, they will still be able to stay in the UK because of their age until legal adulthood. Once they reach 18, their legal status will change, and if their asylum appeal is refused, this could result in forcible removal from the UK, being sent to potentially dangerous locations where they have no family or other social networks. This would involve uprooting them from communities in the UK where they may have developed significant attachments over a number of years.

The uncertainty of what will happen once they are 18, combined with the trauma of past experiences, can have significant impacts on their health. This requires appropriate support from appropriately-trained and resourced social workers and health professionals. Unfortunately, local authority budget cuts have dismantled social work teams with specialist knowledge of working with unaccompanied young migrants and foster families.

“Understanding the challenges that young migrants face, and supporting them in their often difficult physical and psychological journeys, requires a multi-disciplinary approach”

Understanding the challenges that young migrants face, and supporting them in their often difficult physical and psychological journeys, requires a multi-disciplinary approach, and the involvement of a range of professional expertise. We would argue that this also demands a social justice and human rights perspective. The experiences of many young unaccompanied people include examples of material inequality, particularly once 18 and support services are severely reduced or on occasions withdrawn completely. Young people’s lives are framed by intersecting power relationships and complex, multiple identities. Young people highlight stigmatisation because of their immigration status, and a ‘culture of disbelief’ from professionals; while some also identify racism and discrimination on the basis of their religion.

Whilst it is important to recognise structural inequalities and the damaging impact these have on individuals and communities, it is also crucial to harness the power and agency of young people, despite these constraints. For social workers and other practitioners working with individual young people, there are possibilities for practice that promotes the individual young person’s rights and well-being. Positive relationships, a sense of belonging and been cared about can make a significant difference to young people’s lives, and practitioners have a role in developing these relationships with young people themselves; facilitating the young person’s development of these with other professionals and community organisations (e.g. good legal representation); and within their peer networks. Working alongside young people and other like-minded practitioners to challenge unequal power relationships and the underlying framework of the social order can be transformative.

 

Unaccompanied young migrants edited by Sue Clayton, Anna Gupta and Katie Willis is available on the Policy Press website. Order here for £17.59.

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Making ourselves at home in an economy that has enough

by Katherine Trebeck and Jeremy Williams

As we enter 2019, there is one thing that all the commentators and punters seem to agree on: no one can really predict what will happen as the months unfold.

What form will Brexit take? Will Trump’s trade wars lead to hostility between nations or will he pull off a peace deal with North Korea? What will the gadget be that people flock to? Will 2019 be the year that plastic bags increase to 10p each in the UK and plastic straws become a thing of the past?

“So many of the factors that shape one’s life are determined in realms beyond your control.”

Against these multilayered uncertainties is the uncertainty that the majority of people have been dealing with for some time: so many of the factors that shape one’s life are determined in realms beyond your control. In boardrooms that decide your pay and hours. In algorithms that shape political decisions. In weather that is more extreme due to the pollution and emissions of the richest. In navigating social interactions charged with pressure to look a certain way, own certain things, or even to pose and pout in a certain way.

It is no wonder that more and more people are grasping for something different, whether it is apparently simple solutions offered at the ballot box or stepping outside the mainstream into alternative lifestyles.

This individual searching is mirrored in the economy writ large, which also needs to find a different direction. It needs a new project that recognises that the growth-oriented economy of the 20^th century has delivered, but that now, many parts of the world are entering a period where growth is bringing a diminishing suite of benefits and often even increasing harm. The institutions and policies that once rendered growth positive (such as progressive taxation, collective provision of health services and education, or labour market arrangements that balanced power more equally between workers and the owners of capital) are being eroded. This is leaving the benefits of growth to be enjoyed by fewer and fewer people. Pursuit of ever more growth is often driving increasing problems that require yet more resources to fix.

“The pursuit of more poses ever greater risk for people and planet – and yet it, the idea of growth, has a stranglehold on our political and economic systems.”

The pursuit of more poses ever greater risk for people and planet – and yet it, the idea of growth, has a stranglehold on our political and economic systems.

It is time for such economies to recognise that they have arrived.

‘Arrival’ is about adequacy, being able to meet basic needs. It is primarily a material notion, a matter of having the resources to deliver a good life.

It confronts the ostensibly forbidden question of whether development has a destination.

Crucially, however, having enough resources collectively does not necessarily mean everyone individually has enough. Arrival does not imply that everything is resolved and everyone has what they need. Rather, it is the idea that a society collectively has the means for this.

“Failure to share the world’s harvest, both within and between countries, is one of the most enduring frustrations and tragedies of our time.”

Failure to share the world’s harvest, both within and between countries, is one of the most enduring frustrations and tragedies of our time. It is the cause of so many of the challenges and uncertainties that people, politicians, businesses and communities are wrestling with as 2019 unfolds.

Perhaps 2019 will be the year in which people recognise that growth has reached a point where a high standard of living could, theoretically, be universal.

Realising that possibility demands a new project – using resources in a smarter, fairer way, rather than wasting or hoarding them; focusing on the quality and distribution of economic activity and material resources. That is the task of ‘making ourselves at home’.

Once the delusion of growth as both an end in itself and the best of all possible means is discarded, discussion can then turn to what sort of economy we can create, to making better use of what has already been accumulated and, perhaps more than anything, ensuring it is fairly distributed.

Many aspects of this ‘grown up’ economy are already in existence – and indeed flourishing. From pro-social businesses to the ‘remakeries’ that are popping up in high streets. From policy makers creating incentives for the circular economy, to the city mayors using participatory budgeting.

Making ourselves at home is an economy in which there is scope for continuous improvement. Science and technology will advance. Human creativity and imagination are boundless. The economy will remain dynamic.

What changes is the ultimate goal. Making ourselves at home is an ethos of qualitative improvement that is a very different system-wide goal to the sometimes meaningless, sometimes harmful, and sometimes unnecessary, pursuit of more.

 

The economics of arrival by Katherine Trebeck and Jeremy Williams is available on the Policy Press website. Order here for £11.99.

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