Your Papers, Please: The Temporal and Territorial Demands of Welfare State Inclusion

This chapter marks the start of the book’s empirical analysis, focusing on the theme of ‘paperwork’. Administrative tasks have a bearing on return decisions at retirement in several significant ways. Papers need to be in order when finalising one’s pension arrangements and accessing other forms of social protection. In all of these paperwork scenarios a key finding emerges, namely that the legal requirements of welfare state inclusion place significant temporal and territorial demands on hostel residents, a process which is labelled ‘timetabling’. In other words, hostel residents are required to be in certain places at certain times, or for certain durations of time. While the temporal and territorial ‘rules of access’ which pertain to these contexts are applicable to all citizens, migrants and non-migrants alike, it is argued in Sect. 3.2 that certain ‘non-standard’ elements of migrant workers’ biographies lead to systemic disadvantage vis-a-vis non-migrant populations. These non-standard biographical features are primarily manifested in administrative documentation, including mis-transcribed names, discarded proofs of entitlement, ‘sharing’ of social security numbers, inaccurate or conflicting dates of birth, untraceable former employers, and later entry into the workforce. Critically these biographical features only become significant at retirement, lending credence to the idea that retirement is a critical juncture in hostel residents’ lives.