Public Views on Immigrant Deservingness of Welfare Benefits and the Role of Legal-Institutional Frameworks in Europe

The continuous arrival of immigrants in Europe has prompted interest from diverse actors in the sustainability of welfare states. Increased ethnic heterogeneity has contributed to a weakening of the social solidarity within the national welfare systems (Alesina and Glaeser 2004), while also calling for a recalibration of the existing redistributive policies. Are immigrants deserving of welfare benefits and, if so, under what conditions? Integrating research on the deservingness of needy groups, “welfare chauvinism” (preferences to exclude immigrants from welfare systems), attitudes towards immigrants and cross-national variations in legal-institutional practices, this study explores views about granting access to social benefits and services to immigrants, as expressed by the publics of European countries. Results from multilevel models that use survey data from the European Social Survey reveal that public support for granting access to welfare benefits to immigrants varies with socio-economic status. Furthermore, we find that differences in legal-institutional practices are steady predictors, as are certain other features of the country respondents live in. We discuss the results in reference to calls for the “Europeanization” of the welfare systems and immigration regimes.