Migration raises the question of how street-level bureaucrats treat non-citizens when it comes to the distribution of limited welfare resources. Based on a German case study, this article reveals how local social administrators rationalise practices of inclusion in and exclusion from social assistance receipt and associated labour market integration services for mobile EU citizens, who are perceived first and foremost as ‘foreigners’. The findings from fifty-five qualitative interviews with job centre representatives show how politics of exclusion are justified by nationalistic and ethnic criteria of membership. Insofar as EU migrants are considered outsiders to the imagined welfare community of their host country, they are seen as less deserving than German-born claimants. However, mobile EU citizens can earn their legitimacy to access benefit receipt through sustained participation in the host society, demonstrating knowledge of the German language and societal norms so as to appear ‘German’. Such a cultural performance-based logic of deservingness tends to be intertwined with nationality-based and racialising stereotypes of welfare fraud to frame exclusionary practice.

中文翻译：

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值得社会支持吗？街头官僚对欧盟移民在德国的福利要求的决定

移民引发了一个问题，即在分配有限的福利资源时，街头官僚如何对待非公民。本文基于德国的案例研究，揭示了当地社会管理者如何合理化纳入和排除在社会救助收据和相关劳动力市场整合服务中的流动欧盟公民的做法，这些公民首先被视为“外国人”。对就业中心代表的 55 次定性访谈的结果表明，排斥政治是如何被民族主义和种族成员标准所证明的。就欧盟移民被视为东道国想象中的福利社区的局外人而言，他们被视为不如德国出生的索赔人应得的。然而，流动的欧盟公民可以通过持续参与东道国社会，展示他们对德语和社会规范的了解，从而获得“德国人”的形象，从而获得获得福利的合法性。这种基于文化表现的应得逻辑往往与基于国籍和种族化的福利欺诈刻板印象交织在一起，以构成排他性做法。