This chapter focuses on the challenges that older migrants present to established principles and systems of social welfare. It features the elaboration of policies for the welfare of foreign migrants since the mid-20th century in Europe, and more specifically the UK. The particular focus is on the circumstances of older people. Migration policy (or more precisely immigration policy) is very often seen as separate from social policy, while several important welfare measures, particularly those founded on social insurance and ‘intergenerational solidarity’ principles, implicitly presume a ‘closed’ or isolated national population and are confused by arrivals and departures. The disjunction creates a systemic tension between migration and social policies, which for half a century has been tackled by intricate special arrangements, as it were, to bridge the gaps: this chapter discusses whether this piecemeal, reactive approach is sustainable or needs to be replaced with more fundamental reform.

The chapter has five sections. It begins with further discussion of the challenges that large numbers of immigrants and emigrants raise for the established systems of state-supported and managed welfare in Western European countries. The second section describes the major types of ‘older foreign migrants’, showing that they are more diverse than is popularly understood, and specifies the kinds of challenges that they raise for established social policy. The third section is a selective guide to recent research about older migrants, and summarises the latest evidence about the number of UK state pensioners who are resident in foreign countries. The fourth section turns to the processes by which healthcare and welfare policies are ‘harmonised’ among the member nations of the European Union (EU), and evaluates the potential of current policies for achieving the required radical reform. The final section argues that the pressures for reform in certain underlying principles of ‘social insurance’ and the bases of entitlement will continue to grow, and require new kinds of ‘welfare contract’ for migrants of different ages.

Social welfare policies for migrants: the special influences

In states with popularly-elected democratic governments, social welfare policies in their broadest guise are generally a compromise between materialist and humanitarian ambitions. The parallel influences have been most evident in the elaboration of state educational policies since the last quarter of the 19th century.