Borders of Equality Podcast: Recent Episodes
Borders of Equality Podcast
The Borders of Equality is here to make sense of immigration and political economies around the world. Is there a trade-off between social protection and openness to immigration? Do countries with more generous welfare states also enforce stricter immigration policies? Tune in as our panelists and guests grapple with these questions, broadcast to you from The Hague, Netherlands. The Borders of Equality Podcast is made possible by Leiden University and the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO).
In this episode we discuss the regulation of migrant employment in the Netherlands with Imke van Gardingen, a policy advisor at the Dutch trade union federation FNV. In the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom or the US, there have been Covid-19 outbreaks in slaughterhouses and other workplaces that employ large numbers of migrant workers. People who have been observing working conditions in these sectors were not surprised: cramped working and conditions, and a business model that minimises costs sometimes at the expense of health and safety. Imke explains how this labour market works and how loopholes in state legislation enable it.
In this episode, we talk about the differences between democracies and autocracies in how they regulate immigration. We could assume that democracies and autocracies have different ways to regulate immigration: democratic governments should support more open immigration policies, while autocrats, in contrast, should push for more closed immigration policies. In her talk, Katharina Natter shows that, in fact, democracies and autocracies have pretty similar immigration policies. Openness or closure don't vary that much by regime type, at least not systematically. This doesn’t mean that the political process democracies and autocracies are similar. Katharina Natter is a political scientist at Leiden University. Her talk was recorded as part of the Leiden interdisciplinary migration seminars.
All around the world, governments are coming up with new technologies to control and monitor the spread of the coronavirus. Controlling the spread of the covid has created an ever expanding demand for data on citizens. What does this mean for democracy and civil liberties? Does this need for data mean a shrinkage of individual rights? Are we witnessing the same rise of state control as after 9/11? Our guest is Matt Longo. Matt is the author of the Politics of Borders (Cambridge University Press). Matt has written extensively on borders, security and human rights after 9/11.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, countries around the world have adopted drastic measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus. International mobility has been severely disrupted and governments have imposed severe controls on who can enter their territory. In this episode, we discuss the consequences of the global pandemic for immigration and immigration control, and the inequalities that underpin it. Our guest Lorenzo Piccoli has been tracking restrictions on mobility since the beginning of the crisis. He is a scientific officer at the Swiss national centre for research on mobility “on the the move” at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland and a researcher of GLOBALCIT at the European University Institute, Florence.
The Borders of Equality Project is here to make sense of immigration and political economies around the world. Is there a trade-off between social protection and opennesss to immigration? Do countries with more generous welfare states also enforce stricter immigration policies? When do governments enforce stricter migration policies but provide equal access to welfare for migrants ("closure with equality")? When do they enforce liberal immigration policies but restrict their rights to welfare ("openness with segmentation")? Tune in as our panelists and guest grapple with these questions about welfare and immigration, broadcast to you from The Hague, Netherlands. The Borders of Equality Podcast is made possible by Leiden University and the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO).