European Welfare Nationalism: A Democratic Forum Study in Five Countries

Larsen, Christian Albrekt; Frederiksen, Morten; Nielsen, Mathias Herup

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75783-4_3

Cited by 10 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our data do show more general welfare chauvinist attitudes in the UK than in Denmark and Germany. The radical right-wing discourse about services such as the NHS (the universal national healthcare system) being a magnet for attracting sick immigrants and welfare tourism is telling (Larsen et al, 2018). However, even in this context, we do, in general, find the expected differences between welfare chauvinist attitudes connected to in-kind services on the one hand, and benefits on the other.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This has been labelled the fiscal illusion of the public (Logan, 1986). We argue that the looser ‘giver–receiver’ link of services is particularly crucial for welfare chauvinism as natives in North-Western European destination countries often hold the misguided perception that immigrants take more out than they pay in (Larsen et al, 2018; Nielsen et al, 2020).…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 93%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Welfare chauvinism across benefits and services

Eick

Larsen

2021

Journal of European Social Policy

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The article theorises how covering social risks through cash transfers and in-kind services shapes public attitudes towards including/excluding immigrants from these programmes in Western European destination countries. The argument is that public attitudes are more restrictive of granting immigrants access to benefits than to services. This hypothesis is tested across ten social protection programmes using original survey data collected in Denmark, Germany and the UK in 2019. Across the three countries, representing respectively a social democratic, conservative and liberal welfare regime context, the article finds that the public does indeed have a preference for easier access for in-kind services than for cash benefits. The article also finds these results to be stable across programmes covering the same social risks; the examples are child benefits and childcare. The results are even stable across left-wing, mainstream and radical right-wing voters; with the partial exception of radical right-wing voters in the UK. Finally, the article finds only a moderate association between individual characteristics and attitudinal variation across cash benefits and in-kind services.

show abstract

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 93%

Welfare chauvinism across benefits and services

Eick

Larsen

2021

Journal of European Social Policy

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Accordingly, the above-presented hypotheses may only hold when looking at general feelings of redistributive solidarity (e.g., social justice, attitudes towards the welfare state) and not when considering redistribution towards potential outgroups, e.g., welfare chauvinism. The literature on welfare chauvinism showed that redistributive solidarity declines when solidarity is supposed to be extended to national outgroups, i.e., immigrants or ethnic minorities (van der Waal et al, 2013;Kymlicka, 2015;Keskinen, 2016;Larsen et al, 2018). Theoretically, this follows the idea of inter-ethnic competition theory (McLaren, 2003), based on the general idea of realistic threat theories (Bobo and Hutchings, 1996).…”

Section: The Different Dimensions Of National Identity and Redistribu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The bond that binds or drives us apart? An empirical test of the national identity argument in three countries

Rapp

2022

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Solidarity is a key ingredient to making society work. Yet, recent developments such as the refugee crisis and the declining support for social democratic parties question the degree of solidarity in Western societies. So what could increase solidarity? The national identity argument (NIA) claims that a stronger national identity can foster solidarity. While this claim was proven in some cases, several others challenged it. This paper sets out to put the NIA to a severe empirical test by distinguishing five different forms of national identity: national belonging, national pride, patriotism, national chauvinism, and the normative perception of national boundaries. The data stems from national surveys in Germany, the UK, and the USA linked to the ISSP. The results reveal no clear support for the NIA. Whether national identity fosters solidarity depends on what type of national identity and what country one is looking at.

show abstract

“…Unemployed EU Immigrants Cost £1.5 Billion to the NHS Alone 600,000 scrounging immigrants in Britain, they shouldn't be here we owe them nowt Will all the people who welcome immigrants to UK be happy when they can't get job, council house, school for kids or NHS appt I hate what my country has become. England invites breeding, sponging immigrants who have ruined our lives These tweets convey discourses of 'welfare nationalism' (Larsen et al, 2018), and a community of values rooted in liberal ideas that link immigrants' welfare 'deservingness' to belonging and prior contribution. A figure of '600,000' unemployed EU migrants circulated in the October tweets, underscoring the discourse of immigrants as welfare scroungers, and overwhelming our social infrastructure.…”

Section: Socio-economic Impact Of Immigrantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigration, Race, and Nation in the UK: The Politics of Belonging on Twitter

Shah

Ogden²

2021

Sociological Research Online

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

At a time of rising right-wing populism, the heightened political salience of immigration as an issue is linked to conceptions of ‘the national’. In this article, we analyse tweets from non-elites, defined as isolated users with low network influence, engaged in a ‘conversation’ about migration on Twitter. We investigate the values embedded in these attitudes, and what these tell us about constructions and contestations of the symbolic boundaries of the nation among ordinary people. Our corpus includes tweets posted in temporal proximity to the lifting of transitional controls on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants in the UK (1 October 2013 to 1 March 2014). Thematic analysis reveals a cohesive set of anti-immigrant or anti-immigration sentiments linked to UKIP and that express an exclusionary nationalism based on assumptions about race, ‘whiteness’ and entitlement. Also evident is a counter-narrative of pro-immigration sentiments that draw on multiple and sometimes contradictory values. Some of these values contest racialised understandings of the nation but do not coalesce in ways to disrupt the dominance of right-wing anti-immigrant sentiments on Twitter. Our findings demonstrate the importance of investigating values embedded in both anti and pro-immigration attitudes among non-elites and what these values indicate about the possibilities of re-framing migration debates among non-elites in ways that construct more inclusive symbolic national boundaries. In addition, in using the networked properties of Twitter engagement to identify non-elite users, we make a methodological contribution to scholarship on immigration attitudes.

show abstract

European Welfare Nationalism: A Democratic Forum Study in Five Countries

Cited by 10 publications

References 30 publications

Welfare chauvinism across benefits and services

Welfare chauvinism across benefits and services

The bond that binds or drives us apart? An empirical test of the national identity argument in three countries

Immigration, Race, and Nation in the UK: The Politics of Belonging on Twitter

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About