Immigrant Subjective Well-Being in Europe: The Role of Social and Symbolic Boundaries

The cross-national investigation of immigrant subjective well-being remains an under-studied field of immigration research. We approach this gap by following a boundary making approach to the issue. National citizens, EU citizens and third-country nationals (TCNs) form a concentric order of insiders, intermediates and outsiders that is of legal, material and emotional consequence. TCNs status mainly depends on the inclusiveness of integration policies in the receiving country, whereas EU citizens largely enjoy rights similar to those of natives. These policies consequently denote the social boundaries surrounding TCNs, and exclusionary integration policies should result in lower levels of well-being especially for third country nationals.

Following further consideration we will also include multicultural policies as an alternative type of social boundary, GDP, and symbolic boundaries in the form of aggregate attitudes towards immigrants in the analyses. The first multilevel results based on European Social Survey data indicate that the disadvantage with regard to life satisfaction is highest for TCNs. While anti-immigrant attitudes and political multiculturalism do not play a role, we identify an impact of integration policies and of GDP. Integration policies do not matter for the life satisfaction of natives, indicating that these mechanisms are indeed present only for immigrants. In contrast, GDP plays a role for the life satisfaction for immigrants and natives alike. Finally, TCNs profit most strongly from a lowering of social boundaries in the form of inclusive integration policies: in countries that provide a large set of rights to immigrants, the well-being disadvantage of non-EU-citizens is lowest.