Equal access to equal rights? Tackling street-level discrimination against mobile EU citizens across four national administrative contexts

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Christian Adam; Professorin Dr. Eva Thomann
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 500578998

Freedom of movement is a prime ambition of European integration, allowing citizens to freely live, study, and work in other states. It is also subject to political controversy, as shown by the Swiss limitation initiative, or Brexit. Particularly access to social benefits for mobile EU citizens in host countries has sparked political conflict. This project analyses bureaucratic discrimination – the biased treatment of different EU citizens by frontline bureaucrats – within this context. We ask three questions: Is bureaucratic discrimination against different types of mobile EU citizens, who try to access social benefits, mainly a reflection of societal discrimination (RQ1), or do national administrative contexts influence patterns of bureaucratic discrimination (RQ2)? And how can bureaucratic discrimination within different contexts be overcome (RQ3)?Administrative behaviour plays an important – but understudied – role for freedom of movement. First, member states have introduced administrative restrictions to limit the access to social benefits for non-nationals to resolve the tension between commitments related to EU citizenship and domestic political conflict over alleged ‘welfare tourism’. Second, the legal conditions under which mobile EU citizens have access to social benefits abroad are so complex that support in navigating foreign administrative systems is almost indispensable for exercising their social rights. Bureaucratic discrimination thus becomes particularly consequential. Unfortunately, the role of national administrative contexts is poorly understood; both in affecting bureaucratic discrimination and in influencing the effectiveness of anti-discrimination measures. Our project innovates by unravelling the national scope conditions of bureaucratic discrimination through cross-national experiments that are complemented with qualitative evidence. Module 1 analyses all RQs through survey-based conjoint experiments comparing the general public and bureaucrats in four countries with different national bureaucratic models: Spain (Southern Napoleonic), Denmark (Nordic), Ireland (Anglo-Saxon), and Switzerland (Federal). Module 2 evaluates the external validity of these results by moving into the field to conduct experiments with consenting frontline bureaucrats in welfare offices in all four countries (RQ2-3). Module 3 adopts a qualitative approach to probe the internal and external validity of these findings by using in-depth vignette-based interviews with frontline bureaucrats in Switzerland and Spain (RQ2-3). This way, the project advances public administration and migration and mobility research by analysing national administrative contexts as potential scope conditions for the extent of bureaucratic discrimination and for how well anti-discrimination measures work.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Cooperation Partner: Professorin Dr. Anita Manatschal