Who’s next? Cuts to welfare often target immigrants first but then move to nationals

David Cameron’s deal to cut social benefits for EU citizens may in part be a ploy in the internal politics of the Conservative Party. But it’s also the latest push in a long drive by UK governments to squeeze a once universalist welfare regime into a system of discrimination. Here, analysts from MigrationWork describe how the idea of ‘(un)deservingness’ has been applied since Thatcher and the miner’s strike to subvert the principle of universal entitlement, in parallel on two fronts: class and nationality.