Welfare Chauvinism, Economic Insecurity and the Asylum Seeker “Crisis”

Abstract

Immigration has been a major trend in the last decades in Europe. However, immigrant access to the social security systems has remained a contentious issue having gained additional salience in light of the recent asylum-seeking developments. We focus on welfare chauvinism, the idea that immigrants should not participate in welfare resources, as an attitudinal dimension. We seek to answer two primary questions: To what extent are different types of objective and subjective material deprivation related to welfare chauvinism? What is the role of the recent asylum seeker influx? Using European Social Survey data and employing binary and generalized ordered logit models with country fixed effects, we find perceptions of deprivation to be more meaningful than objective factors related to potential job loss, and some relationships depend on the specific type of deprivation. On the country level, in line with the deservingness of asylum seekers as a group, higher levels of asylum seeking are related to lower levels of welfare chauvinism, while GDP per capita is not associated with welfare chauvinism. Finally, the generalized ordered logit model shows that some relationships vary according to the strictness of welfare chauvinism, which would not be visible in a conventional ordered logit model.

Attitudes toward Redistributive Policy: An Introduction

“…Consistent with Heizmann, Jeidinger, and Perry's [99] findings, Steele and Perkins [101] challenge the idea that ethnic heterogeneity universally decreases support for the welfare state through an empirical focus on neighborhood-level dynamics. Using original survey data from a pilot study of 320 New York City residents, the authors focus on perception.…”

“…Finally, several of our authors take on social stratification with studies of the timely topic of the roles of immigration and racial and ethnic diversity in shaping social policy preferences. Heizmann, Jeidinger, and Perry [99] examine the welfare chauvinism hypothesis, the idea that immigrants should not have the same access to welfare resources as natives. They examine how both objective and subjective material deprivation are related to welfare chauvinism using two waves of the ESS data (2008 and 2016) from 26 countries.…”

“…Using original survey data from a pilot study of 320 New York City residents, the authors focus on perception. While Fatke [92] and Heizmann, Jeidinger, and Perry [99] above focused on perceptions of individual SES, Steele and Perkins examine how perceptions of the ethnic/racial composition of respondents' neighborhoods of residence affect support for redistribution and social policies among majority and minority group members. Their focus on NYC, unusual for its long history of immigration and ethnic and racial diversity, allows them to offer a contrast with findings from countries that are experiencing recent surges in racial/ethnic or immigrant diversity.…”

The Refugee Reception Crisis : Polarized Opinions and Mobilizations

“…For this reason, people who had traditionally voted left began voting for far-right parties (Kietchell 1997) whose political agendas turned immigrants into the "new undeserving poor" of Western societies (Bommes and Geddes 2000). However, a comparison of the data collected by the European Social Survey in 2008-9 to that of 2016-17 (Heizmann et al 2018) shows that welfare chauvinism did not increase after the long summer of migration.…”

The institutional logic of giving migrants access to social benefits and services

“…Whether welfare nationalist attitudes have increased over time is difficult to tell, as historical survey data are unavailable. Recent studies indicate stability from 2008 to 2016 in European countries except for an increase in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic (Eger et al, in press; Heizmann et al, 2018).…”