The Boundaries of Welfare: European Integration and the New Spatial Politics of Social Protection

Abstract

To what extent and in what ways have European integration redrawn the boundaries of national welfare states? What are the effects of such redrawing? These questions are interesting and relevant because boundaries “count”: they are a pre-requisite for bonding individuals, groups, and territorial units, and for activating or strengthening their dispositions to share. Historically, welfare state formation can be read as a process of boundary-building — essentially through the establishment of compulsory public insurance schemes. European integration has prompted a reversal of this process: free movement and competition rules have in fact started to challenge the traditional bounding prerogatives of the nation-state in the social sphere. Today, the EU constrains not only the scope and content of bounding decisions (who is entitled to share what), but also the very “right to bound” in the first place. Such constraints have far reaching economic and financial implications. But their social and political implications may be even greater, given the importance of nation-based social sharing for material life chances, cultural identities and legitimation dynamics. As shown by the chapters in this book, reshuffling the “boundaries of welfare” can destabilise the basic architecture of Europe’s national societies and political systems. In order to counter this destabilisation, a carefully designed strategy of institutional reform is needed, capable of reconciling “solidarity” and “Europe” through stronger citizenship rights and more socially friendly regulatory instruments.