Navigating the Representative-Politics-Liberal-Rights Dilemma: Social Policy Designs for Nonremoved Migrants

Although nonremoved rejected asylum seekers (NRASes) are declared unwanted, the liberal state is obliged to provide them with basic social protections. We argue that various social policy designs can mediate the representative-politics-liberal-rights dilemma and allow for (limited) access to differentiated, conditioned benefits. Drawing on migration control and welfare-state literature, the findings stem from expert interviews with stakeholders and document analysis in Austria, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Welfare-enabling approaches are context specific, varying from path dependencies in Sweden to change-resistant forms of policymaking in Austria. In the Netherlands, exclusionary measures are explained by early general welfare retrenchments.