Useful Gastarbeiter, burdensome asylum seekers, and the second wave of welfare retrenchment: Exploring the nexus between migration and the welfare state

A new kind of historic transformation is underway in twenty-first-century Europe. Twentieth-century Europeans were no strangers to social, economic and political change, but their major challenges focused mainly on the intra-European construction of stable, prosperous, capitalist democracies. Today, by contrast, one of the major challenges is flows across borders - and particularly in-flows of non-European people. Immigration and minority integration consistently occupy the headlines. The issues which rival immigration - unemployment, crime, terrorism - are often presented by politicians as its negative secondary effects. Immigration is also intimately connected to the profound challenges of demographic change, economic growth and welfare-state reform. Both academic observers and the European public are increasingly convinced that Europe's future will largely turn on how is admits and integrates non-Europeans. This book is a comprehensive stock-taking of the contemporary situation and its policy implications.