Boundaries of Solidarity: Immigrants, Economic Contributions, and Welfare Attitudes

Abstract

In the politics of welfare, citizens often prioritize natives over immigrants. What conditions reduce welfare discrimination against immigrants? Original survey experiments from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy reveal that the divide between natives and immigrants remains the fundamental cleavage in the politics of welfare. All immigrants face welfare penalties, including immigrants from Western countries. Even young, progressive, highly educated, and economically secure native citizens strongly penalize immigrants. Although immigrants never fully overcome identity barriers, the welfare support gap between natives and immigrants decreases when immigrants have a long work history. A history of employment provides evidence of reciprocity through past contributions and signals immigrants’ commitment to the community. Other immigrants’ characteristics, such as higher education and proactive work attitude, fail to decrease the gap. This article contributes to the study of solidarity in diverse societies and the impact of immigration on the welfare state.

Helping to Flee a Political Crisis: A Conjoint Experiment on the Aid Preferences of Wartime Russian Migrants

“…People often perceive individuals as deserving when they signal cues of reciprocity, lack of control, similarity to the helper's identity, need, and gratitude (five criteria known in deservingness literature as CARIN) ( Van Oorschot, 2006;Petersen, 2012Petersen, , 2015. Although immigrants are often perceived as less deserving of assistance and welfare compared to citizens (Magni, 2022;Reeskens and Van der Meer, 2019), these criteria positively affect emigrants' deservingness across various contexts and migration circumstances (Bansak et al, 2016;Lawlor and Paquet, 2022). Context-specific cues like military conflicts and political persecution signal need and lack of control, increasing perceived deservingness (Bansak et al, 2016;Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2015;Lawlor and Paquet, 2022).…”

“…1 While numerous studies have examined the factors influencing the attitudes of host country citizens towards different groups of migrants (Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2015;Magni, 2022), little is known about how migrants themselves make decisions on what groups of potential migrants to support. While a substantial body of research focusing on the assistance provided by migrants to their family members and friends exists (Massey et al, 1999;Heering et al, 2004;Haug, 2008), the present study endeavors to explore the underlying motivations for emigrants offering aid to unfamiliar individuals trying to escape their countries.…”

Numbers, Selectivity, and Rights: The Conditional Nature of Immigration Policy Preferences

“…Restricting migrant rights might be very important to people who generally oppose immigration, because it would allow them to prevent migrants from getting access to valuable social welfare benefits. There is a well-developed literature on the strength of "welfare chauvinism," which is the desire to limit welfare rights to native-born citizens, who are seen as more deserving because of their historical commitment to the host country (Careja & Harris, 2022; Magni, 2022). If those concerns were removed by limiting migrant rights, then the anti-immigration camp might be willing to compromise and allow greater migration flows (e.g., for the purpose of providing valuable labor).…”

How Crises Shape Circles of Solidarity: Evidence From the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy

“…This expectation is consistent with a literature that ties economic insecurity to welfare chauvinism (Mewes & Mau, 2012; Van der Waal et al, 2013: Cavaillé & Ferwerda, 2018). More broadly, nationality often emerges as an important boundary for empathy (Magni, forthcoming; Reeskens & Van Oorschot, 2012; Van der Waal et al, 2010). Second, because economic policy can be attributed to specific political actors, it is plausible that those who suffered income losses discriminate against partisan outgroups perceived to promote harmful policy.…”