Multicultural welfare politics Immi­

gration mostly has no effect on welfare

attitudes
David Brady and Ryan Finnigan

In the past 15 ears, there has been a surge in migration to the affluent democra- Kurzgefasst: In den vergangenen Jah-
cies. For example, the percent foreign born more than doubled in Ireland and ren wurde immer wieder Besorgnis
more than quadrupled in Spain over the last decade – rising to 14.8 percent of über die Auswirkungen von Einwan-
the population in Ireland and 10.6 percent in Spain. Of course, the rise of im- derung auf die Sozialpolitik geäußert.
migration has not been uniform across all affluent democracies. Only 3 percent Eine zentrale Frage lautet, ob zuneh-
of Finland and 1.6 percent of Japan were foreign-born in 2005. Even though mende Einwanderung dem Verhältnis
Germany has a sizable foreign-born population, the percent foreign-born actu- von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern zum
ally declined modestly from 12.9 to 11 percent from 1995 to 2005. The U.S. gets Sozialstaat schadet. Aktuelle For-
a lot of credit for being a “nation of immigrants,” but new immigrants actually schungsergebnisse am Beispiel von
amounted to a greater share of the population in 1996 than 2006. Thus, the most 17 entwickelten Demokratien zeigen,
important change might actually be the remarkable diversity in the extent to dass dem nicht so ist. Es gibt sogar
which affluent democracies have experienced rising immigration. Hinweise darauf, dass Einwanderung
in einigen Fällen zu einer positiveren
What are the consequences of this rising immigration for the politics of social Einstellung zum Sozialstaat führt.
policy? Scholars, commentators and politicians have presented a variety of
claims for why immigration poses a serious challenge to the generous social Summary: In recent years, there has
policies of Europe and other countries. Our research challenges these claims been increased concern about the
and ultimately concludes that rising immigration does not undermine the wel- consequences of immigration on so-
fare state. We specifically investigate what we call the “public support” for the cial policy. One central question is
welfare state – the public’s beliefs, preferences, and attitudes favoring social whether rising immigration under-
policies. mines the public’s belief about and at-
titudes toward the welfare state. Cur-
The argument that immigration threatens the welfare state has emerged partly rent research investigating 17
because countries with generous welfare states have traditionally been viewed affluent democracies shows that im-
as more ethnically homogenous than countries with weak welfare states. The migration mostly has no effect on
best example of this is the U.S., with its thin social policies and greater ethnic public support for the welfare state.
heterogeneity. Scholars have demonstrated that ethnicity, race and religion There is even evidence that flows of
were more important sources of identity than social class for Americans at the immigration actually increase some
beginning of the 20th century. While workers in Europe were collectively mobi- welfare attitudes.
lizing and pressuring governments to expand social insurance and healthcare,
American workers were bitterly divided by race and religion. In her influential
book The Color of Welfare, sociologist Jill Quadagno argues that ethnic and racial
divisions constrained the development of the American welfare state. Social
policies purposefully excluded racial minorities, and race “became embedded in
the state when welfare programs were enacted,” and was the “central social
dynamic” shaping the politics of social policy. Even today, Americans are more
likely to oppose welfare if they reside in proximity to larger African American
populations.

In his book Why Americans Hate Welfare, Martin Gilens argues that Americans
view welfare as rewarding the undeserving poor, Blacks as lazy and undeserv-
ing, and Blacks as the primary beneficiaries of welfare. Gilens demonstrates that
these perceptions are reflected in and amplified by the media, which dramati-
cally overrepresents Blacks in depictions of the poor. The implication of this
scholarship is that as other affluent democracies encounter the greater ethnic
heterogeneity that results from immigration and become more like the U.S.,
public support for the welfare state will decline. There is already accumulating
evidence that rising immigration in Europe has elevated the perception that
immigrants exploit the welfare system. Such views that minorities dispropor-
tionately benefit from welfare are likely to undermine public support for wel-
fare generally.

WZB Mitteilungen Heft 134 Dezember 2011 1

 A slightly different version of the argument emphasizes what scholars call “eth-
nic fractionalization” in preventing solidarity among citizens. Ethnic fractional-
ization occurs when there is a diversity of ethnic groups, and those groups are
sharply split along socio-economic lines and as a share of the population. As
mentioned above, scholars have long contended that homogeneity is a key basis
of solidarity in and trust of one’s fellow residents. Being the same ethnicity and
speaking the same language make class-based solidarity easier and increase the
sense of community in people’s minds. According to this line of reasoning, the
native-born lack solidarity with immigrants and have a preference for “in-
group” members who share cultural customs and physical appearances.

In fractionalized societies, people seem to be less willing to support investments

in public goods like public transportation and education. Recent studies show
that societies with more ethnic fractionalization have less public spending as a
share of the economy. The concern with rising immigration has been that eth-
nic fractionalization will emerge as society becomes divided into affluent na-
tive-born residents and marginalized immigrants forming ethnic and religious
minority groups. One of the most prominent accounts within this literature is
provided by economists Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser’s book Fighting
Poverty in the U.S. and Europe. They explicitly hypothesize that increased ethnic
fractionalization due to immigration will undermine the generosity of European
welfare states. According to them, right wing and even centrist politicians will
use anti-immigrant rhetoric as tools to dismantle social policies. Ominously,
they predict: “As Europe has become more diverse, Europeans have increasingly
been susceptible to exactly the same form of racist, anti-welfare demagoguery
that worked so well in the United States. We shall see whether the generous
European welfare state can really survive in a heterogeneous society.”

Despite mounting claims that immigration undermines public support for the
welfare state, a smaller skeptical literature has begun to emerge. Scholars in the
skeptical camp point to inconsistencies in the empirical evidence supporting
the arguments above. In fact, the first author of this essay authored (with Beck-
field and Seeleib-Kaiser) an article in the American Sociological Review that
showed that there is no association between increased immigration and a
smaller welfare state. Others suggest that any tradeoff between ethnic hetero-
geneity and redistribution is overstated. While the U.S. was traditionally more
heterogeneous than Europe, Australia and Canada are much more heteroge-
neous than Japan – yet public support for the welfare state is significantly low-
er in Japan than in Australia and Canada. Further, the recent concern with im-
migration neglects the fact that scholars have demonstrated other more
powerful influences on social policy attitudes. If these established influences
are the paramount predictors of welfare attitudes, immigration is likely to play
a marginal role.

We entered this debate with some expectation that immigration would under-
mine public support for the welfare state. Our research utilized data on attitudes
regarding social policy for 17 affluent democracies in 2006 and 12 in both 1996
and 2006. This public opinion data from the International Social Survey Pro-
gram (ISSP) was linked with information about the stock and flows of immigra-
tion in each country. We assessed six different welfare attitudes about whether
people feel it “should be the government’s responsibility to… reduce income dif-
ferences between rich and poor… [or] provide a job for everyone who wants
one… [or] provide a decent standard of living for the old” or remedy unemploy-
ment, housing, and healthcare. The analyses controlled for a country’s economy
and history of social policy, and the individual’s social class, family characteris-
tics, religion, age, and gender. Our sample included countries with high and low
levels of immigration, with booming and struggling economies, and with mea-
ger and extensive welfare states.

Our analyses mostly failed to support the hypothesis that immigration under-
mines public support for the welfare state. The percent foreign- born, annual
net migration, and the ten-year change in the percent foreign-born do not have
consistent negative effects on welfare attitudes. There is some evidence that the
percent foreign-born significantly undermines the specific welfare attitude

2 WZB Mitteilungen Heft 134 Dezember 2011

that government “should provide a job for everyone who wants one.” However,
there is much more evidence showing that net migration and change in percent
foreign-born have surprisingly positive effects on welfare attitudes. These two
measures of immigration flows are associated with greater support for attitudes
regarding retirement, housing, and healthcare especially.
There is even some evidence that the percent foreign-born increases support
for attitudes regarding retirement. Thus, the evidence is quite mixed and most-
ly contradicts the literatures discussed earlier. While some countries with in-
creased immigration have lower levels of support for the welfare state, even
more countries exhibit the opposite pattern. For example, net migration amount-
ed to less than one-tenth of a percent of Japan in 2005, and Japan had the lowest
level of support for the view that government has a responsibility to provide
housing (only 38 percent in favor). By contrast, Spain had the highest level of net [Foto: Udo Borchert]
migration (5.8 percent) and the highest support for the housing attitude (96
percent). David Brady is an associate professor of sociology
and public policy at Duke University. He studies po-
verty/inequality, work/labor/economic sociology, and
Why do countries with high immigration flows tend to have higher public sup- political economy/political sociology. He is the author
port for the welfare state? It could be that immigration increases the perception of Rich Democracies, Poor People (Oxford University
of higher unemployment and more competition for jobs, and such perceptions Press). In the summer of 2011, he contributed to the
tend to trigger support for the welfare state. Scholars have shown that percep- WZB lecture series on social inequality.
tions of immigration as an economic risk or threat are positively associated [email protected]
with a preference for redistribution. Thus, heightened immigration could induce
respondents to favor a greater welfare state to compensate for and protect
themselves from what they perceive as economic competition from immigrants.
Similarly, it could be that immigration flows lead residents to feel vulnerable
and insecure. A sense of vulnerability and insecurity could create a perception
of unmet societal needs, and lead to a desire for increased welfare state inter-
ventions. In fact, our analyses show that net migration is significantly positively
associated with a preference for greater welfare spending on health, pensions
and unemployment.

Our results challenge much conventional wisdom and many scholars and com-
mentators. In the process, we encourage greater caution with bold claims about
the negative effects of immigration or ethnic heterogeneity for welfare states.
We show that it is essential to compare a broader set of countries, to examine
those countries over time, and to get past simplistic U.S.-Europe differences. We
also demonstrate that examining multiple welfare attitudes provides a more
informative picture of the effects of immigration. Our research leads us to hy-
pothesize that citizens might have a bifurcated response to rising immigration. [Foto: privat]
On one hand, many citizens will prefer more extensive and generous social
policies. On the other hand, there is convincing evidence that rising immigra- Ryan Finnigan is a graduate student in Sociology at
Duke University. His research areas include racial
tion contributes to anti-immigrant attitudes and support for extremist right-
stratification, demography, and urban sociology. His
wing political parties. We even suggest that these two outcomes might be com- dissertation examines the effects of changes in urban
patible for a segment of the population that has less education, is marginally demographic composition, and housing and labor
employed or unemployed, and has lower incomes and more insecurity. markets on racial/ethnic inequality in homeowner-
ship, wages, and health.
In sum, our study shows the value of cross-national survey research on impor- [email protected]
tant social problems and challenges facing modern societies. The availability of
cross-national survey data and the statistical techniques to analyze such data
have increased substantially in recent years. Social scientists are better poised
now than ever to provide convincing answers to questions like ours. Ultimately,
we find very little evidence that immigration poses a threat to the welfare state.
Rather, immigration and ethnic heterogeneity may actually be compatible with
generous social policies. Though many politicians and commentators provoke
fear by talking about the failures of multiculturalism, these claims have little
empirical support. Immigration does not clearly reduce public support for the
welfare state and some aspects of immigration seem to increase the public’s
beliefs in and preferences for social policy.

WZB Mitteilungen Heft 134 Dezember 2011 3