Building a wall around the welfare state, or around the country? Preferences for immigrant welfare inclusion and immigration policy openness in Europe

Abstract

Existing research on welfare chauvinism, which involves preferences about the inclusion or exclusion of immigrants in welfare programmes, often overlooks individual preferences regarding immigration policy openness (the number of immigrants allowed into a country). This article posits that these two dimensions should be considered together. The reason is that the implications of including or excluding migrants in welfare programmes vary significantly depending on whether a country admits few or many immigrants. Utilizing data from two waves of the European Social Survey across 23 European countries, we develop a typology of individual stances that encapsulate attitudes towards both immigration policy openness and immigrant inclusion in the welfare state. Our analysis reveals that the distribution of these stances varies considerably across European nations. We further examine how the probability of endorsing one of these typologies correlates with individual socio-economic characteristics, especially education. We find that higher education levels are linked to a higher likelihood of supporting either a combination of openness and inclusion or, to a lesser extent, openness paired with welfare exclusion. Additionally, more exclusionary attitudes are observed in countries where welfare usage by migrants is higher.