Eight Years Later. Changes in Welfare Chauvinism over Space and Time

The scholarship on welfare chauvinism – favoring welfare redistribution but not with immigrants (Kitschelt, 1997) – has gained traction over the last few years. Not only have the availability of refined social surveys innovative experiments pushed the research agenda, also major social events have caused debates on restrictiveness over welfare access to immigrants. However, the possibility that opinions towards the access to welfare for immigrants have become more strict in response to the Great Recession in tandem with the asylum crisis caused by the Syrian war has not been subjected to any empirical test. In this paper, we will analyze the new wave of the European Social Survey, fielded in 2016 across approximately 20 European countries. In this survey, representative samples have been questioned when immigrants should access to welfare equal as natives: (1) immediately on arrival, (2) after a year, (3) after worked and paid taxes at least a year, (4) once they have become a citizen, (5) never. Because this question was offered in the 2008 wave of the European Social Survey, it is possible to study changes over time. The question that are at the core of our study is first and foremost if and in what direction public opinion on immigrant access to welfare has shifted, second whether such shifts are caused by compositional changes in the population (e.g. more people have become unemployed), or third whether such changes are caused by contextual changes (e.g. a higher influx of immigrants).