The impact of conditionality on the welfare rights of EU migrants in the UK

Abstract

This paper highlights and explores how conditionality operating at three levels (the EU supranational level, the UK national level and in migrants' mundane 'street level' encounters with social security administrators), come together to restrict and have a negative impact on the social rights of EU migrants living in the UK. Presenting analysis of new data generated in repeat qualitative interviews with 49 EU migrants resident in the UK, the paper makes an original contribution to understanding how the conditionality inherent in macro level EU and UK policy has seriously detrimental effects on the everyday lives of individual EU migrants.