No work – no rights
20-10-2009

By Maj Kastanje, Project Officer in projekt UDENFOR

Distressed EEC citizens are now being ignored when we don’t need them anymore in the labour market.Some end up in the street without any rights to even the most necessary basic necessities. Thus they are even worse off than the Danish homeless people and entirely expelled from society.

Winter is approaching, which to some of us means indoor cosiness in a warm living-room. But to others this foreshadows cold weather, a difficult and hard time where every day is a fight for survival to find a warm, dry, and unnoticed place to sleep.

I am talking about homeless people and in particular homeless EEC citizens in Denmark whom the Danish state refuses access to publicly supported shelters to which Danish citizens have access – in other words they are deprived of the most basic, social and humanitarian social security while looking for a job in Denmark.

A considerable part of these homeless people originate from the east-European EEC-countries and they arrive here in order to work. In contrast to what many people think, as a starting point they don’t stay here illegally. They have a right to come here to look for a job – in fact they are encouraged to do so by the Danish government, and they are backed up by the principle of  freedom of movement for workers. There was indeed no end to the enthusiasm when the government in its campaign for international recruiting in 2007 proclaimed that “foreign manpower is the way to secure more employment, growth, and prosperity. Foreign manpower, including people from the east-European EEC-countries contribute by securing that Danish enterprises must not refuse orders due to lack of manpower.

In fact Denmark earns quite a lot of money on the east-European manpower. According to a report from The Rockwool foundation Research Unity the 30.000 working East-Europeans will contribute as much as 4 billion Danish crowns to the public finances per year. The authors of the report estimate that in this way the east-European manpower can solve more than a quarter of Denmark’s future financial problem of 14 billion Danish crowns. Accordingly one would think that we could afford to help the few hundreds who don’t make it: those who do not find work at once, those who are cheated by the employers into moonlighting at wages which are absolutely insufficient to pay a lodging and those who from different other reasons end up in the street for a period of time. But we cannot afford it as the former minister of Welfare made it clear when in 2007 she threatened shelters with removing public support if they let foreigners in. And it doesn’t seem that the present minister of the Interior and Social Affairs has planned to change that line.

The previous winter this situation resulted in the death of two Poles in the street in Copenhagen – last winter a death was just barely avoided because of a private initiative from a number of humanitarian organisations in the capital. They would not put up with letting nationality decide the destiny of human beings, and therefore they opened a temporary shelter together for homeless foreigners during the coldest months of the year (January – March) on contributions from private contributors. Again this year they try to raise money for the shelter so that some of the people in need get access to sleep indoors at night during the coldest months. But during the rest of the year the homeless foreigners depend of the courage and will of the single shelter to ignore the threat of the government to close the money box.

There is no chance of reducing the number of homeless East-Europeans in the streets, on the contrary, for they are hit very hard and very quickly by the financial crisis. Primarily because they are foreign workers, especially in the unskilled trades - at the bottom of the food chain and consequently they are fired first. This concerns for example those who have worked in the building trade or in the industry. Secondly, at the same time, it becomes more difficult for the job seekers to get employment as there is no longer any need of manpower in Denmark. Finally, the consequences of the financial crisis are far more serious in these people’s native countries than in Denmark. Several east-European countries are on the border of national bankruptcy, and thus it is no solution for them to return to their country.

That they should just go home has by the way been one of the most used arguments against helping these people. They have to go home, because there is no longer any need for them in Denmark. At any rate we should not start offering them something for then Denmark will just turn into being the shelter of all Europe. Behind these arguments lies a view of the East-Europeans as a mere economic resource, a manpower, not as real human beings. It is the same logic which the present legislation is based upon which excludes the homeless people from humanitarian help. They simply exist merely by virtue of their economic function in society – at the moment they change from being “manpower” into being real human beings, they lose all rights.

But we do talk about people. They are people in need – a need we have not seen in Denmark for many, many years, a need meaning the lack of the most basic: food, clothes, and a warm, dry place to sleep. These are people who, when they came here, were filled with expectations and ready to work, but who ended up in a social comedown because they were forced to live in the street. A temporary problem finding a job and housing ends up for some people in complex problems, such as abuse or psychic and physical illness. So far it can get because they are denied help at the beginning when their problems are still manageable. Things have come to such a pass because in Denmark we will only acknowledge them as long as they earn money to us.

I know very well that it is not a durable solution to give daily allowance or cash support to anybody who crosses the border to seek a job in Denmark. Therefore a common European solution is needed to confront these challenges. The homeless EEC-citizen is one of the most tangible proofs that the EEC principle of the free movement of workers cannot function without some sort of a common social policy. But this may not happen for a long time. And while we are waiting we must relate to our fellow human beings and at least not deny them the most basic necessities. These are, among other things, food, clothes, and shelter, which, by the way, we have committed ourselves to take care of when we, in 1972, ratified The International Convention on financial, social and cultural rights.