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The Legacy of EU Citizenship Status in the EU Settlement Scheme: Women in Atypical Work

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JCMS Journal of Common Market Studies

Published online on

Abstract

["JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nIn November 2020, the UK government admitted that the European Union (EU) Settlement Scheme (EUSS) is likely to discriminate against some groups protected by the Equality Act 2010, concluding that any discriminatory effects are justifiable, and published its official assessment in a Policy Equality Statement. This article will scrutinise a specific group of individuals discriminated not for their single‐axis characteristics, but at the intersection of multiple identities. We focus specifically on the intersection of gender, migrant status and lower socio‐economic status to claim that the EUSS disproportionately affects migrant women of a lower socio‐economic status, who are more likely to interrupt full‐time employment to assume carer roles. Hence, our focus is on migrant women in atypical work, and we argue that they are at risk of greater gendered susceptibility to discrimination under the EUSS given the scheme's reliance on automatic data checks of a continuous employment footprint. By using UK labour market data and analysing the Policy Equality Statement, we show that the EUSS fails to account for the intersection of multiple identities that render these women more vulnerable. We also argue that the disadvantages faced by migrant women in atypical work derive from the legacy of EU law and the legal framework of EU citizenship and its related rights."]