AccessPlus: Access to social rights in Germany and France: inequalities and discrimination, gender and migration in the jeux d'échelles of the European space

France and Germany have been chosen as comparative contexts, whose contrasting traditions of social citizenship are intertwined with Europeanisation in different ways. Based on an abstract concept of equality and a universally understood social integration, social citizenship in France allows for differentiation according to social status and for tying public action [action publique] to concrete objectives. In Germany, on the other hand, social citizenship is based on belonging to a socio-cultural community and allows for its delegation to intermediary bodies, decentralised organisation and thus more disparities. We examine social inequalities and discrimination in access to social rights with regard to women and migrants. Both population groups have historically been marginalised in the labour market and in the context of social security.

Our project comprises three goals that build on each other:

• First, based on primary sources for Germany and France, we elaborate a historical sociology of (i) the problematisation forms of access to social rights, (ii) the legal codifications and (iii) the policy instruments of compensating social inequalities and the anti-discrimination struggle in the field of gender equality, migration and ethnicity.
• Secondly, we take an inventory of European rules and regulations on access to social rights and benefits based on administrative and legal documents.
• Third, we examine the effects of Europeanisation on access to social rights and benefits in both countries, particularly with regard to the selected population groups. Here we focus on the period after the adoption of the European Anti-Discrimination Directive in 2000.

The project aims to identify the changes, adjustments, and difficulties in legal codification and in the development of policy instruments on the basis of which inequalities are redressed and discriminations are combated in Germany and France.