Immigration and Support for Redistribution: Lessons from Europe

Abstract

Research shows that opposition to policies that redistribute across racial divides has affected the development of the American welfare state. Are similar dynamics at play in Western Europe? For many scholars, the answer is yes. In contrast, we argue that researchers’ understanding of the political economy of redistribution in diversifying European countries is too incomplete to reach a conclusion on this issue. First, existing evidence is inconsistent with the assumption—ubiquitous in this line of research—of a universal distaste for sharing resources with people who are culturally, ethnically, and racially different. Second, important historical and institutional differences between the United States and Europe preclude any straightforward transposition of the American experience to the European case. We discuss what we see as the most promising lines of inquiry going forward. (JEL D64, H23, J15, J68, K37, Z13)

In-Group Bias in Preferences for Redistribution: A Survey Experiment in Italy

“…In particular, R2 suggests that there might be an economic in-group bias acting beneath the way people forms policy preferences, since the information that the share of poor immigrants is smaller than what originally thought and that natives are less severely affected by poverty than what was believed, reduces support for an exclusionary welfare state rather then increasing it. This allows us to connect with a number of available papers that also explore the connections we are concerned with (see (Alesina et al, 2021b;Burgoon and Rooduijn, 2021;Cavaille and Van der Straeten, 2022;Dahlberg et al, 2012;Elsner and Concannon, 2020) for details). However, with this study we add several original features to the reference literature.…”

“…Two versions of the hypothesis have been proposed, the economic and cultural in-group bias (for a review on the topic, see (Cavaille and Van der Straeten, 2022;Elsner and Concannon, 2020).…”

“…A welfare chauvinist is someone who does not necessarily want to reduce the overall level of redistribution, but does not want to grant immigrants the access to social benefits. The discussion on welfare chauvinism is getting particular attention in light of the success of far-right and anti-immigrants political parties in several European countries where voters seem to support a stronger intervention of the State but they endorse a particular vision of the welfare system where policies are designed according to principles like nativism or equity/reciprocity rather than equality, solidarity and need (Alesina, Murard and Rapoport, 2021b;Burgoon and Rooduijn, 2021;Cavaille and Van der Straeten, 2022;Dahlberg et al, 2012;Elsner and Concannon, 2020).…”