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This article examines 14 judgments over a ten-year period of challenge to the removal of welfare support from 'late claimers' for asylum. The case history spans a period of transition in Britain from the general principles of the Common Law to the implementation of the Human Rights Act (HRA) (Home Office, 1998), but indeterminacy is to the fore in such a developing area of law, allowing considerable scope for judicial interpretation. The focus of this article is therefore the cumulative dynamic of the judgments, their strategic delivery and their policy impact. The analysis demonstrates the force of general principles in yielding a solution, while also providing evidence of judgment as political dialogue over competing visions of society. doi: 10.1017/S004727940999002X

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2009.01228.x Byline: Lydia Morris (1) Keywords: Asylum; cosmopolitanism; human rights; judgment; welfare Abstract: Abstract This paper addresses the recognition in cosmopolitan debate of a possible disjuncture between the normative ideal of cosmopolitanism and its realization in practice. Taking as its focus the potential conflict between human rights commitments and national concern about immigration control, it reflects on a series of legal challenges to UK government attempts to withdraw support from asylum seekers who do not claim on entry into the country. Set in the context of socio-legal theory, these cases are analysed for signs of a 'national' or 'cosmopolitan' paradigm in judicial interpretation, and considered as a possible instance of reflexive judgment, espoused as a feature of cosmopolitanism. Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Sociology, University of Essex Article History: (Date accepted: January 2009) Article note: email: ldmorris@essex.ac.uk

This article shows how a conditional approach to rights dominates New Labour's perspective, not only in the delivery of welfare for full citizens but also in relation to immigration, where rights are a privilege to be earned by meeting labour market needs. This approach does not readily address the position of asylum seekers, who are claiming an absolute right of protection, but an erosion of entitlement during status determination has been used as a means of deterrence and control. The article applies a civic stratification perspective to these developments, as a means of bringing together the operation of rights with the practice of governance, and highlighting the ethical issues at play.

Political and academic interest in cross-national migration has generated two very different and potentially polarized positions. One perspective emphasizes the continuing power of the nation state, while the other sees migration, and more specifically migrants' rights, as the manifestation of an emergent 'post-national' society. This article offers a conceptual framework which addresses this polarization through the concept of civic stratification (Lockwood, 1996). In illustrating its application, the study shows how such an approach goes beyond a traditional citizenship framework (e.g., Marshal, 1950) in considering degrees of partial membership, but remains cautious with respect to claims about universal, transnational rights., The late twentieth century has convincingly been described as both 'the age of migration' (Castles and Miller, 1998) and 'the age of rights' (Bobbio, 1995), but theoretical debate about the [...]

In May 1999 Germany took a significant step away from its reliance on blood based belonging, revising its nationality law to introduce an element of territory (jus soli) in the designation of citizenship. This paper offers Germany as a case study in the management of migration through a hierarchical system for the granting of rights, and considers the likely impact of the new law on the legal structures of inclusion and exclusion. It is argued that alongside the enhanced recognition of the original guestworker population a set of contradictory pressures now dominate the politics of migration - the recognition of human rights, the management of the labour market and the protection of welfare resources. These pressures are mediated by the granting and withholding of rights as part of a system of selection, surveillance, deterrence and control which has broader implications for our thinking about citizenship.

This article reports on comparative research into the living standards of unemployed couples claiming Income Support, couples claiming in-work benefits and couples in receipt of a male median wage. The data reveal high levels of debt and credit dependence across the whole sample, which have a particularly damaging impact on the daily consumption patterns of the unemployed group. The problems this raises for comparative judgements about living standards are discussed, most notably the need for a longitudinal perspective in both the analysis of financial circumstances and the interpretation of data on current standards of living.

The work of Marshall, Roberts and Burgoyne makes an important contribution to current debates on class, but it is argued that its theoretical basis is in need of further development. Specifically, it is argued that the 'Nuffield programme' of class analysis has lost sight of its Weberian roots. The approach departs from a view of social classes as real social groups and moves towards a nominalist view of class in which categories are justified on purely predictive grounds. It is suggested that an awareness of Weber's distinction between class situation and social class provides a firmer theoretical basis for the arguments set out by the authors and allows a more dynamic view of class to be constructed. Such a dynamic account must address issues of labour market structure, household divisions and civic status. Only on this basis can the idea of the underclass be properly assessed.

This paper reports on the results of a survey carried out in Hartlepool towards the end of 1989. It considers the problems posed by data collection through survey methods to enquire into the management of household finances, and adopts a procedure which first examines treatment of the man's wage, and follows with additional questions about use of the woman's wage, access to personal spending money, and the location of final authority over spending. The data are based on a comparison between four different groupings with reference to the man's employment status: Group A: couples in which the man has been unemployed for at least the last 12 months. Group B: couples in which the man is currently employed and has held the same job for at least the last twelve months. Group C: couples in which the man has been recently recruited to employment. Group D: a residual group covering any other status, notably early retirement, sickness, disability or student status. An age range of 20-55 was imposed. Marked contrasts were found between these groupings though further variation was introduced by employment for the woman. Broadly speaking there are two instances of heightened financial influence for women: low income prompts female management, whilst women's employment (and therefore higher income) increases joint management. It is in the traditional and declining situation of a sole male earner in which female authority or influence is at its lowest.

The social security structure has been seen as a serious disincentive to the employment of women married to unemployed men. The implied significance of this disincentive is not apparent from verbal accounts, where only a minority of such women cite social security considerations as having any direct relevance in their own labour force experience. Recent research, critical of the social security model, has been conducted with a view to exploring the employment strategies of couples. In such research, economic structure is seen as the context of household employment strategies but not, it appears, as part of their substance; household level processes and |external' economic processes are separated. In this respect, such approaches parallel the social security model. The present paper is based on an analysis of the household circumstances and employment histories of 790 couples in Hartlepool. Our findings suggest that |strategies' regarding household income maintenance are patterned in relation to labour demand and occupational opportunity. This association contributes to the coincidence of spouses' employment status and is indicative of the problems of separating employment demand and labour supply processes, a separation which leads the social policy literature to overstate the significance of social security disincentives to employment.

This paper reports on research carried out in Hartlepool, based on data from three groups of male respondents: (1) those employed for at least the last twelve months; (2) those recently recruited to employment, (i.e. within the last twelve months); (3) those currently employed and having held the same job for the last twelve months. By comparing the work histories and characterising features of these three groupings the paper sets out to explore the theoretical and empirical validity of the notion of the underclass, focusing specifically on two competing definitions: non-participation in the labour market, and systematic disadvantage in the labour market. The data reveal a distinctive pattern of broken employment for the second of the three groups identified above. Those affected are thus located between the two contrasting positions of long-term unemployment, and relatively secure employment. The existence of such a grouping is argued to undermine a definition of an underclass purely in terms of unemployment. However, the characteristics of the 'underemployed', despite indicating a clear pattern of disadvantage, are too heterogeneous to constitute a distinctive class position. Keywords: employment histories, underclass, stratification, unemployment, polarisation, flexibility., Introduction The very high rate of male unemployment, and more particularly its increased duration, have been matters of sociological concern for at least the last decade. Unemployment has expanded an [...]

This paper reports on research designed to investigate the nature and implications of the social segregation of the long term unemployed in a Northern UK town suffering high rates of unemployment. The project is designed to test the hypothesis that the social polarisation identified by Pahl (1984), confirmed by this writer's small scale research, and apparent in national statistics, reaches beyond the household to the extended family, and to friendship and neighbourhood contacts. Work history evidence from a sample of 791 married couples is used to establish the importance of informal information flows in shaping employment prospects, and additional material is presented which shows concentrations of unemployment in particular kinship and friendship networks. These data, together with evidence that employed informants are the most effective means of job access, demonstrate that a complex of factors will act together to reduce the changes of the long term unemployed finding work.

Michele Lamont, The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class and Immigration. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000 This book sets out to chart the moral [...]

This article considers the possibility that aspects of recent thinking on governmentality could be applied to the delimitation of rights and elaboration of controls in the policy and practice of British immigration over the period of Conservative rule. First, the complex of external strategies which interact to control and inhibit migration, including the discursive assertion of sovereign boundaries in the race of moves towards a frontier-free Europe are reviewed. Then, turning to official expressions of concern over public funds, the centrality of this rationale in the drive for correspondence between benefit regulations and immigration rules is documented. This drive, it is argued, is a key tactic in the development of internal controls, both as a basis for interagency cooperation and the means by which service providers can be encouraged to police migration. Finally, the paper shows how the rationality dictating these changes has itself been questioned and further elaborates the limits of 'governmentality' in practice., As Zolberg (1989) has argued, 'One important theoretical development of the past quarter of a century is recognition that it is precisely the control which states exercise over borders that [...]

Research into the institutional tensions and ambiguities associated with international population flows, and connected policy issues, within the European Union gives an insight into the global/national tension mentioned in much of the globalization literature. This research has also sought to establish how 'post-national' Europe really is. To the extent that multi-state collaboration has been established, it is through intergovernmental meetings operating on the basis of national sovereignty. If sovereignty were to be superseded with regard to migration, there would still be an European Union committed to the exclusion of all migrants except the more wealthy.