The new politics of the welfare state in the age of migration: analysis of the immigration-welfare state nexus and the role of multidimensionality of the welfare state

Abstract

In times of increasing international migrations, there has been growing interest in understanding the consequences of immigration to the welfare state. Previous literature has been inconclusive: one the one hand, scholars argue that immigration undermines public support for the welfare state (efficiency hypothesis). On the other hand, there have been studies suggesting that immigration might increase support for the welfare state (compensation hypothesis). Hence, this research proposes two mechanisms that provide dynamic perspectives into the existing literature: solidarity and perceived risk effects. Each of the effects investigates how different levels of interpersonal trust and occupations influence the welfare support of people with the inflows of immigrants. Furthermore, this research highlights the multidimensionality of the welfare state within the analysis of immigration-welfare state nexus by differentiating social insurance (pension and unemployment policies) and social investment policies (childcare policy). Based on multi-level linear regression models by using the data from the European Social Survey (2008/2016), the findings show a variety of outcomes across different years and social policies. There is evidence that immigration possibly undermines people’s support for social policies in recent years, especially for social insurance policies. The low level of trust and the higher degree of perceived risk associated with immigration appear to lead to lesser support only for the unemployment policy, whereas the case of pension policy shows the opposite. The childcare policy as a social investment policy report not statistically significant results, yet the findings implicate that people might be more supportive of childcare policy with inflows of immigrants. Consequently, this research reveals that there are different directions of people’s support towards social insurance and social investment policies regarding the effect of immigration. Furthermore, when the trade-off question is considered, people prefer the social insurance policy over social investment policy. As a result, this research not only attempts to provide dynamics of immigration-welfare state nexus but also shows intricate implications of it.