“Mobile Welfare in a Transnational Europe: An Analysis of Portability Regimes of Social Security Rights” (TRANSWEL) (Starting date: 1 Feb 2015, duration: 42 months)

This international comparative and interdisciplinary project is conducted by researchers based in four countries. It addresses one of the most important and controversial issues in the European Union today: the social rights of EU citizens from the new EU member states who move to live and/or work in the old member states. The project is funded by New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe, NORFACE, http://www.norface.net. Find also some additional information on welfarestatefutures.wordpress.com.

Empirically, the project traces the migration of regularly and irregularly employed migrants and their family members, and the transfer of their social security rights between four pairs of countries: Hungary–Austria, Bulgaria–Germany, Poland–United Kingdom and Estonia–Sweden. It examines the social rights of mobile citizens in policy and in practice; the ways in which mobile EU citizens experience, organize and manage their welfare transnationally; and the consequences for the patterning of inequality among EU citizens.

The project involves four teams of researchers, respectively based at the Brandenburg Unversity of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (Anna Amelina, overall project lead), University of Vienna (lead: Elisabeth Scheibelhofer), Södertörn University (Ann Runfors) and University of Bath (Emma Carmel).