Welfare spending and the public's concern for immigrants: Multilevel evidence for eighteen European countries

Comparative Politics

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 63-82

  Van Oorschot, Wim ^a   Uunk, Wilfred ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 36849077524     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5129/001041507X12911361134433     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Tom Pettigrew and Roel Meertens, "Subtle and Blatant Prejudice in Western Europe," European Journal of Social Psychology, 25 (January-February 1995), 57-75;
2. Jeanne Ben Brika, Gerard Lemaine, and James Jackson, Racism and Xenophobia in Europe (Brussels: European Commission, 1997);
3. Jack Citrin and John Sides, "European Immigration in the People's Court: Economic Need or Cultural Threat?," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September 2-5, 2004.
4. See, for exceptions, Lauren Appelbaum, "Who Deserves Help? Opinions about the Deservingness of Different Groups Living in Germany to Receive Aid," Social Justice Research, 15 (September, 2002), 201-25;
5. Rebecca Raijman, Moshe Semyonov, and Peter Schmidt, "Do Foreigners Deserve Rights? Determinants of Public Views towards Foreigners in Germany and Israel," European Sociological Review, 19 (September 2003), 379-92.;
6. Wim van Oorschot, "Who Should Get What, and Why? On Deservingness Criteria and the Conditionality of Solidarity among the Public," Policy and Politics, 28 (January 2000), 33-49.
7. Rainer Muenz and Hans Fassmann, Migrants in Europe and Their Economic Position: Evidence from the European Labour Force Survey and from Other Sources (Hamburg: Hamburg Institute of International Economics, HWWA, 2004).
8. Keith Banting, "The Multicultural Welfare State: Social Policy and the Politics of Ethno-linguistic Diversity," paper presented at the Conference on Labour Market Institutions and Labour Market Outcomes, Burlington, Ontario, September 27-28, 1998.
9. George Freeman, "Migration and the Political Economy of the Welfare State," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 485 (May 1986), 51-63;
10. Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
11. Giacomo De Giorgi and Michele Pellizzari, Welfare Magnets in Europe and the Costs of a Harmonised Social Assistance (London: University College London, 2003).
12. Michael Bommes and Andrew Geddes, eds., Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare Sstate (London: Routledge, 2000).
13. Wim van Oorschot, "Individual Motives for Contributing to Welfare Benefits," Policy and Politics, 30 (January 2002), 31-46; Appelbaum; Raijman, Semyonov, and Schmidt.
14. Peer Scheepers, Merove Gijsberts, and Marcel Coenders, "Ethnic Exclusionism in European Countries: Public Opposition to Civil Rights for Legal Migrants as a Response to Perceived Ethnic Threat," European Sociological Review, 189 (March 2002), 17-34.
15. For example, Richard Coughlin, Ideology, Public Opinion and Welfare Policy: Attitudes towards Taxes and Spending in Industrial Societies (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1980);
16. Peter Taylor-Gooby, Public Opinion, Ideology and State Welfare (London: Routledge, 1985);
17. Pauli Forma and Olli Kangas, "Need, Citizenship or Merit: Public Opinion on Pension Policy in Australia, Finland and Poland," in Stefan Svallfors and Peter Taylor-Gooby, eds., The End of the Welfare State? Responses to State Retrenchment (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 161-89;
18. John Hills, "Following or Leading Public Opinion? Social Security Policy and Public Attitudes since 1997," Fiscal Studies, 23 (December 2002), 539-58.
19. Raijman, Seymonov, and Schmidt; Appelbaum. Because Applebaum's study is confined to German students only and is therefore highly selective, evidence from this study is not presented in this article.
20. Van Oorschot, "Who Should Get What, and Why."
21. See, for example, Pettigrew and Meertens; Juergen Hamberger and Miles Hewstone, "Inter-ethnic Contact as a Predictor of Blatant and Subtle Prejudice: Test of a Model in Four Western European Nations," British Journal of Social Psychology, 36 (June 1997), 173 -90; Scheepers, Gijsberts, and Coenders.
22. Raijman, Semyonov, and Schmidt; van Oorschot, "Who Should Get What, and Why."
23. Raijman, Semyonov, and Schmidt.
24. Van Oorschot, "Who Should Get What, and Why."
25. Realistic group theory and social identity theory are two other widely used theories of ethnic prejudice. Realistic group theory is strongly related to economic self-interest theory. It states that competition over scarce resources between ethnic groups promotes in-group favoritism and out-group hostility. It can account for a (positive) effect of immigration on ethnic prejudice, but it can not account well for individual differences in ethnic prejudice. See, Marcel Coenders, Nationalistic Attitudes and Ethnic Exclusionism in a Comparative Perspective (Nijmegen: University of Nijmegen, 2001). Social identity theory is a social psychological account of ethnic prejudices. It holds that processes of social categorization and social comparison influence individual (social) indentity and in-group favoritism. Although social indentity theory offers an explanation of the psychological mechanisms of ethnic prejudices, it does not offer predictions on the social conditions of these prejudices.
26. Ibid., p. 35.
27. Lawrence Bobo and James Kleugel, "Opposition to Race-targeting: Self-interest, Stratification Ideology, or Racial Attitudes?," American Sociological Review, 58 (August 1993), 443-64;
28. David Sears, Carl Hensler, and Lesley Speer, "Whites' Opposition to Busing: Self-interest or Symbolic Politics?," American Political Science Review, 73 (June 1979), 369-84.
29. Donald Kinder and David Sears, "Prejudice and Politics: Symbolic Racism versus Racial Threats to the Good Life," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40 (September 1981), 414-31;
30. David Sears, "Symbolic Racism," in Phyllis Katz and Dalmas Taylor, eds., Eliminating Racism: Profiles and Controversy (New York: Plenum Press, 1988), pp. 53-84;
31. Coenders. See also John McConahay, "Self-interest versus Racial Attitudes as Correlates of Anti-busing Attitudes in Louisville: Is It the Buses or the Blacks?" The Journal of Politics, 44 (November 1982), 692-720.
32. Kinder and Sears, p. 416.
33. Ibid.
34. Herbert Hyman and Charles Wright, Education's Lasting Influence on Values (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
35. Van Oorschot, "Individual Motives."
36. Olli Kangas, "Self-interest and the Common Good: The Impact of Norms, Selfishness and Context in Social Policy Opinions," Journal of Socio-Economics, 26 (January 1997), 475-94;
37. van Oorschot, "Individual Motives"; Morton Blekesaune and Jill Quadagno, Public Attitudes toward Welfare State Politics: A Comparative Analysis of 24 Nations, paper presented at the First Annual Conference of ESPAnet, Copenhagen, November 11-13, 2003.
38. Van Oorschot, "Individual Motives."
39. Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Anti-poverty Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999);
40. Martin Rein, "Dominance, Contest and Refraining," in Asher Ben-Arieh and John Gal, eds., Into the Promised Land: Issues Facing the Welfare Sstate (Westport: Praeger, 2001), pp. 213-38.
41. Lincoln Quillian, "Prejudice as a Response to Perceived Group Threat: Population Composition and Anti-immigrant and Racial Prejudice in Europe," American Sociological Review, 60 (August 1995), 586-611; Scheepers, Gijsberts, and Coenders.
42. Such a positive effect of immigration on ethnic tolerance can also be expected from contact theory. See Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (New York: Doubleday, 1954). According to this theory, contact between distinct population groups increases mutual understanding and decreases ethnic prejudices.
43. Scheepers, Gijsberts, and Coenders.
44. See www.europeanvalues.nl. Multilevel analysis requires nonmissing observations. The percentage of missing observations is low for the variables studied: 1.7 percent for relative concern for immigrants, 0 percent for age and sex, 0.9 percent for education, 0.5 percent for employment status, 3.2 percent for ethnic intolerance, 1.7 percent for beliefs about reducing inequalities, and 1.0 percent for beliefs about guaranteeing basic needs. Cumulatively, 6.1 percent of the observations are omitted due to a missing value on any of these variables. Income is not included in the analyses, although it would have been an interesting characteristic to study from the viewpoint of economic competition theory. The share of missing values on income is too high (15 percent) for the purposes of this study.
45. Wim van Oorschot, Wil Arts, and Loek Halman, "Welfare State Effects on Social Capital and Informal Solidarity in the European Union: Evidence From the 1999-2000 European Values Study," Policy and Politics, 33 (January, 2005), 35-56.
46. An alternative interpretation is that expressed concern reflects the degree to which people perceive the living conditions of a group as problematic. This problem awareness may be related to the perceived or actual level of social protection for that group offered by the state. If in a country the social protection of that group is weaker than for other groups, more people will be inclined to say that they are (more) concerned with the living conditions of that group (relative to other groups), and that group will get a higher score on the variable. However, elsewhere this interpretation does not hold. Relative concern is consistently highest for elderly people and for the sick and disabled. These groups in all European welfare states are relatively best protected socially. See ibid.
47. In practice, only a minority of the respondents (4 percent) scores positively on the measure of relative concern. For them, expressed concern on immigrants is greater than expressed concern on the elderly. Overall, the mean score on the measure of relative concern is - 1.11, with a standard deviation of 1.16.
48. Deservingness theory and studies offer reasons why immigrants occupy a low position in the public's rank order of needy groups' deservingness. Immigrants tend to score less positively on the criteria people apply when assessing a group's deservingness. The five central deservingness criteria are control, level of need, identity, attitude, and reciprocity. Van Oorschot, "Who Should Get What." Immigrants may be expected to score particularly badly on the criteria of identity and reciprocity, while in the public's eye most migrants may also be accused of having put themselves in a situation of welfare dependency (control).
49. The employment status of individuals is assumed to measure the economic conditions that are central to the theory of economic self-interest. The theory predicts that more welfare spending increases economic conditions (for example, lowers unemployment) and thereby increases relative concern for immigrants. An individual proxy of (un)employment rather than a country-level estimate is used since there are too few countries for more than two contextual variables. In addition, welfare spending and unemployment at the national level correlate highly, which makes it impossible to distinguish the two. We believe that an individual proxy is as good as a national measurement of unemployment because the national unemployment rate is just an aggregate of individual employment.
50. There are other questions on people's attitudes about immigrants in the EVS 1999-2000 study. However, the question chosen here is best suited since it asks for people's concern for the living conditions of immigrants in comparison to other needy groups.
51. OECD, Social Expenditures Database (SOCX), 1980-2001 (Paris: OECD, 2004).
52. Jean-Christophe Dumont and Georges Lemaitre, Counting Immigrants and Expatriates in OECD Countries: A New Perspective (Geneva: OECD, 2004).
53. Van Oorschot, "Who Should Get What"; van Oorschot, Arts, and Halmon.
54. Unreported ANOVA analysis of country differences in relative concern has shown that most of the country differences are statistically significant. Only Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and France do not differ significantly from the European mean in their relative concern.
55. See, for example, Paul Sniderman, Loek Hagendoorn, and Markus Prior, "Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers: Exclusionary Reactions to Immigrant Minorities," American Political Science Review, 98 (January 2004), 35-49.
56. Van Oorschot, "Individual Motives"; Blekesaune and Quadagno.