Civic Stratification and the Civic Ideal: The case of welfare and asylum

Abstract: Beck (2006) has suggested that trans-national migration and the consolidation of human rights are features of an emergent cosmopolitan society in which we see a blurring of distinctions with respect to the rights of citizens and non-citizens. This paper argues that the presence of noncitizens on national territory has rather been accompanied by an expansion of distinctions in a system of civic stratification. It outlines the construction of asylum seekers as a 'target group' within this complex, and the withdrawal of welfare support from 'late claimers'. However, the paper also considers the limits placed on the erosion of rights through the human rights challenge that followed, in which the European Convention on Human Rights played a central role. Finally, the paper elaborates the interplay of formal entitlement and informal status in the process of change, and examines the implications of the whole account for cosmopolitan thinking.