The EU member states engage in budgeting through a set of supranational fiscal procedures outlined in EU treaties and supporting legislation. The EU itself is a suprnational government with its own budget and budgetary institutions, procedures, and programs. It enforces these macrobudgetary rules that significantly constrain the policy decisions of the individual member states.

This chapter examines the budgetary behavior of the former countries of the British Empire, now known as Commonwealth countries. Orginally created by the 1931 Statute of Westminister that recast the British Empire as a “Commonwealth of nations,” the modern Commonwealth consists of a fifty-four-country network of disparate people created in 1949. The chapter in particular examines the budgetary practices of the United Kingdom and India.

All governments have budgets. Budgeting is a core state function. Effective budgeting empowers the state to prioritize policies, allocate resources, and discipline the bureaucracy. Proficient budgeting contributes to efficient fiscal and macroeconomic policies. This book offers a comparative framework that identifies eight categores called cultural clusters that help identify the budgetary institutions and policies adopted by different governments.

This chapter introduces the mechanisms of deliberate or coincidental 'othering' of immigrants through law and the application of law. It starts by introducing what 'othering' means and then transplants the findings into the context of legislation and law. The chapter emphasizes the systemic 'otherness' of immigrants in a legal system defined by the nation state. Citizens are per definition in the in-group, whereas foreigners are per definition in the out-group. The chapter also addresses how the differentiation between foreigner and citizen is more complicated in the EU with its EU citizenship and free-movement rights. The chapter addresses the role of law as an amplifier of 'otherness' or as a tool for the inclusion of immigrants.

This chapter combines a critical reflection of the approach underlying the contributions to this volume with a forward-looking inspection of research questions for the future. At an analytical level, it discusses how to address the linkage between legal developments and broader debates to distinguish situations of overlap from scenarios of mismatch when legal rules are not influenced by discursive ‘othering’ or may even serve as a counterpoint. From a methodological perspective, this chapter presents different options of how to integrate interdisciplinary impulses into doctrinal analyses by combining the ‘negative’ critique of 'othering' with a ‘positive’ reconstruction of the legal material. Conceptually, we should be careful not to overestimate the role of migration law for ‘othering’ processes, which may reflect broader transformative processes or overestimate the relative (in)significance of migration law for the lived experience. This chapter concludes with an argument that no form of migration control should be equated with ‘othering’ and that we should enquire, rather, to what extent the motives or effects reflect degrading or exclusionary tendencies.

After a series of decisions, the Court of Justice of the EU has been accused of undermining the value of Union citizenship as a tool to overcome the confines of ‘market citizenship’, thereby conferring residence and equal treatment rights to all Union citizens, regardless of economic status. This chapter argues that, rather than ‘abandoning’ Union citizenship, the Court has evolved its approach in these cases following the adoption of Directive 2004/38. The Court treats residence and equal treatment rights under the Directive as a closed system, with lawful residence under Article 7 of the Directive being the gateway to citizenship rights. Whilst this is legally coherent, strict reliance on the Directive is liable to create problems, particularly for low-wage workers and the economically inactive. The closed system of residence and equal treatment rights potentially results in more insecurity when (i) Member States systematically check the individual’s residence status when assessing social assistance claims; (ii) the individual applies for permanent residence status and must prove lawful residence for a continuous period of 5 years; and (iii) returning to their home Member State with a third country national spouse following a period of residence in a host Member State.

The reception of asylum seekers in Europe is a highly debated topic: while national governments oversee the implementation of reception conditions, European member states are bound by European directives on minimum standards. Asylum seekers in collective reception facilities should be provided with at least a minimum of reception standards, including housing, food, material reception standards, and legal assistance. However, reception practices not only largely differ across member states but also constantly draw boundaries between asylum seekers and the host society through geographical, architectural, and bureaucratic measures. Using case studies from Austria and Italy, this contribution investigates how, on the one hand, certain (minimum) standards are applied in relation to restrictive integration claims and discourses and how, on the other hand, resources (e.g. for integration measures or housing) are strictly bound to exclusive structures that complicate the inclusive partaking of refugees in host societies. It highlights the mechanisms whereby national reception practices amplify the ‘othering’ of migrants in the context of asylum seeking.

This chapter focuses on EU laws and policies on family reunification in order to demonstrate how they create new ‘others’. The creation of Union citizenship disrupted the binary logic of ‘national’ and ‘foreigner’ in national immigration regulation even though, at first sight, it seemed to have recreated it at the EU level as the ‘EU citizen’ and ‘Third Country National’ (TCN). However, on a closer look, it becomes apparent that the new picture is much more complex, as a new hierarchy of statuses with different packages of rights has been created at the EU level for nationals, EU citizens, and TCNs alike. This chapter compares and contrasts family reunification rights of Union citizens and TCNs granted under the Treaties, international agreements, and secondary EU law and sheds light on the different degrees of ‘otherness’ and privilege created at EU level.