Abstract
Welfare opinion research has traditionally viewed migration as a potential hazard for welfare solidarity. In this article, we argue that while increased presence of foreigners can indeed make some people less supportive of public welfare provision in general or trigger opposition to migrants’ social rights, the link between migration and solidarity is not universally a negative one. Instead, many people can combine support for migration with high preferences for comprehensive social protection; others can endorse migration while they are not particularly supportive of an all-encompassing welfare state. Based on this line of reasoning we construct a taxonomy of four ideal types of welfare solidarity that are present in contemporary European welfare states. To illustrate the usefulness of this heuristic tool, we apply Latent Class Factor Analysis to European Social Survey round 8 data. We find that the majority of Europeans (56%) combine strong support for both migration and the welfare state (extended solidarity). However, exclusive solidarity is also widely spread as over a quarter of respondents (28%) oppose migration while expressing strong support for the welfare state. People who oppose migration and have relatively low preference for the welfare state (diminished solidarity) represent a small minority (5%). A little more than a tenth (11%) of Europeans endorse migration, but express relatively low support for the welfare state, which we assume to be a reflection of cosmopolitan solidarity. Despite considerable variation in the incidence of the four solidarities across countries, the preference structure is the same for all. Further, we find that at the individual level, the propensity to hold one of these types of solidarities is influenced by social trust, citizenship and country of birth, financial situation, education, and residence type. However, the extent of migration and social spending do not appear to be related with the propensity of holding either type of solidarity as the liberal’s dilemma and the welfare chauvinism theories would predict.
Highlights
IntroductionOld-age pensions, sickness and disability insurance, unemployment benefits, family transfers and social services represented an embodiment of institutionalised forms of national solidarity as they were designed to redistribute resources (Kymlicka 2015; Swaan 1992)
Until recently, welfare solidarity was by and large a national phenomenon in Europe
We have argued that such an unidimensional approach to establishing the link between attitudes towards migration and the welfare state is not sufficient to capture the interaction of these two complex phenomena at the individual level
Summary
Old-age pensions, sickness and disability insurance, unemployment benefits, family transfers and social services represented an embodiment of institutionalised forms of national solidarity as they were designed to redistribute resources (Kymlicka 2015; Swaan 1992). These services were financed through taxes or by social insurances, redistributing both horizontally, i.e. across the life cycle, and vertically, i.e. from rich to poor. The second, welfare chauvinism theory, states that people do not like to share resources with ‘outsiders’, but they do want to maintain benefits they are accustomed to They are against opening the welfare system to migrants (or even against migration in general). They have been tested separately and the evidence is mixed
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