In common with last year's Social Policy Review, the COVID-19 pandemic remains the ever-present backdrop to research and policy globally in 2022. Although we have not included a separate section on the pandemic for this year's volume, the ongoing impact of COVID-19 is a recurring thread across the chapters. While contributions to Social Policy Review 33 in 2021 focused on the initial impact of the pandemic on social security and welfare systems which were not designed to respond to a global pandemic, chapters this year are more reflective in tone, responding to the greater accessibility of data about policy responses to the pandemic across different contexts. We have divided the volume into two sections: Part I contains contributions from the new Social Policy Association policy groups, with chapters exploring climate justice, employment policy and housing. Part II continues the international theme of last year, with contributions covering social policy developments across the UK, Europe and further afield.

In Chapter 1, in the context of last year's COP26 summit in Glasgow, Snell et al review climate justice, social policy and the transition to net zero in the UK on behalf of the Climate Justice and social policy group. They suggest that social policy has a key role in a just transition to net zero, by ensuring that no one is left behind in the transition, and they explore the policy implications for the areas of housing, employment and food. Chapter 2 by Green et al from the Employment Policy in Context group explores the changing role of the local state in employment policy, drawing out the opportunities and challenges of localisation of employment policy. In a similar vein, Bennett and Jones from the Employment and Social Security Policy group discuss active labour market policies in Chapter 3. They assess the role of social policy academics in influencing government policy and advocating a ‘pragmatic realist’ approach where social policy researchers engage with knowledge exchange practices, but recognising the responsibility of policymakers to engage with insights from social policy research.

The UK House of Commons Liaison Committee rarely makes headline news. However, in May last year, amid the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, a widely reported exchange took place.

Stephen Timms MP, the Chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, asked a question about the plight of a migrant family in his constituency who had been unable to access social security benefits during the pandemic because of their immigration status. The prime minister stumbled over the question – seemingly surprised that the family was ineligible.

Boris Johnson's disbelief at the exclusionary consequences of the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) rule, which restricts access to social security benefits for temporary migrants in the UK, illustrates how migrants who are excluded from social security are frequently forgotten by policymakers and in social policy debates.

The NRPF rule is just one element in an array of exclusionary policies across European welfare regimes that make support contingent on immigration status. The three chapters in this section unpack some of these exclusionary welfare policies and explore how they operate in contrasting national contexts. Chapter 10 by Gago and Chapter 11 by Barry explain how EU regulations interplay with national law, public opinion, and migration and welfare regimes. In Chapter 12, Mallet-Garcia and Nicola Delvino explore the situation of irregular migrants who are subject to exclusionary policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Chapter 10, Gago analyses how fears of ‘welfare tourism’ have been used to restrict access to social security for migrants. Using a comparative approach, Gago examines social policies of successive governments in the UK and Germany in the wake of EU enlargement. Concerns about welfare tourism have been a frequent feature of UK welfare debates, and featured heavily in the Brexit referendum, which took place in a broader context of Eurosceptic thought and hostility to European freedom of movement. Gago notes that political discourse in Germany has been less hostile to freedom of movement, and Euroscepticism has been less widespread. Recently, however, centre-right politicians have moved towards a more critical position on immigration and social security rights. These differences have resulted in a UK focus on restricting residence rights for European Economic Area (EEA) nationals, and a German focus on reducing the financial costs of social security.

Introduction

Over the past year, immigration has been a continued focus of policy debates in the Global North, with governments in Hungary and Italy elected on openly anti-immigration and ‘welfare chauvinist’ platforms. On the other side of the Atlantic, the US federal government's family separations policy has also been a source of fierce dispute. In the UK, the potential implications of Brexit for European Union (EU) migrants in the UK and the treatment of the children of the ‘Windrush Generation’ under the hostile (or ‘compliant’) environment have caused particular controversy and precipitated the resignation of the Home Secretary.

However, there has been less discussion of the rights of the next generation of migrants who came to the UK from the Commonwealth after the Immigration Act 1971. Often from the same Caribbean countries as the Windrush Generation (Price and Spencer, 2015; Jolly, 2018), they could be described as the ‘Air Jamaica generation’ after the former national carrier's regular flights from Kingston's Norman Manley Airport to London Heathrow between 1974 and 2007. In contrast to those migrating to the UK in the immediate post-war period, families in the post-Windrush era did not come as British passport holders, but were ‘subject to immigration control’, with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) and the risk of becoming undocumented if they overstayed the length of their visa.

As the children of the ‘Air Jamaica generation’ have NRPF and restrictions on the right to take up paid employment, they do not have the access to the welfare state or social security system that children with British citizenship have. They therefore run an increased risk of destitution, defined in section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 as lacking adequate accommodation (or any means of obtaining it), or as not being able to meet other essential living needs. This has serious consequences for child welfare. There have been three serious case reviews into child deaths in England reported in the past year involving children with NRPF, all of which referred to their NRPF status as an exacerbating factor (NSPCC, 2018).