This thesis explores the role of social work in shaping access to social protection among migrants who are undocumented or hold a precarious immigration status, with an empirical focus on Finland. This diverse group of precarious migrants includes both people living in the country without a residence permit and legally residing migrants such as seasonal workers, EU migrants without a right of residency, and international students from outside the European Union. Although these groups are widely excluded from public social protection provision, they remain entitled to ‘indispensable subsistence and care’. In practice, it is often statutory social workers who widely determine what this right entails, as they are mandated to determine access to social services. Moreover, multiple NGOs provide social protection for precarious migrants. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in social services in the public sector and in NGOs, the thesis shows that social workers support precarious migrants by way of providing access to vital resources and by rejecting police requests to share client data for immigration enforcement. However, despite similar legal entitlements, precarious migrants receive different treatment by social workers depending on how they are categorised in social services, resulting in a differential access to social protection within the diverse group.

This article contributes to the literature on public social work with irregular migrants in the Nordics. It explores how racialized conceptions of clients emerge in encounters between social workers and migrants, and it examines the consequences of these perceptions. Drawing on an analysis of qualitative data from observations of 123 meetings between irregular, precariously included migrants and social workers in Finland, this article uses the theoretical lenses of racialization and humanitarian governance. It demonstrates that the outcomes of these encounters depend on whether the migrants are categorized as 'undocumented', 'EU citizens', or members of 'the mobile population'. Migrants categorized as belonging to 'the mobile population' are ensured food access and granted small amounts of money for topping up SIM cards and public transportation tickets less frequently in comparison to other groups. The article sheds light on the role of social work in the production of a differentiated and racialized access to social protection within the diverse group of precariously included migrants.

Access to social protection for migrants holding precarious statuses is limited and differentiated, and often an outcome of various encounters with intermediaries, such as social workers. The article investigates into the roles labor plays in intermediation practices in statutory social services for precariously-included EU migrants in Finland. Drawing on a one-year ethnographic fieldwork study in social services in the capital area in Finland, the article sheds light on how social workers detach labor from the realm of formalized wage work by recognizing informal labor in terms of labor. However, in the name of care, advancement on a formal employment path is defined as a deservingness criterion for accessing last-resort social services, stemming from its potential to facilitate registrations of EU citizens in Finland. This rationale of care constitutes obstacles for accessing social protection for EU migrants, but also obstacles for social workers who express a desire to develop social work practice that transcends sedentarism and workfare, where transnational lives and multiple ways of working and living are taken into consideration.