Racialization through (un-)deservingness: political discourse on poverty migration and access to social rights in Germany

Based on the political debate preceding the introduction of two laws that restricted access to social rights for EU citizens, the article examines the construction of deservingness regarding access to the welfare system for EU citizens in German political discourse. Connecting theories of racial capitalism, whiteness, and deservingness, I show how a racist and classist discourse categorized poor Romanian and Bulgarian nationals, including Roma, as poverty migrants and as disposable labour. The debate on poverty migration foregrounds the permanence of once established categories and the immutability of ascribed negative characteristics, such as laziness, potential criminality and a lack of assimilation into the labour market. The discourse on disposable labour serves to strengthen hierarchies of labour power, which are deeply racialized. It ensures the ready availability of cheap and exploitable labour power, while at the same time externalizing its social costs. Both discourses and the resulting restrictive laws create and reinforce an edge population made up of poor Romanians, Bulgarians and Roma, who are portrayed as not assimilable to the labour market and hence not deserving of welfare support. The hierarchies of whiteness and Europeanness translate into hierarchies of mobility, confining the affected population to edge places, that is, the peripheralized East of Europe.