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International Journal of Comparative
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The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0020715212451987
2012
2012 53: 120 originally published online 20 JuneInternational Journal of Comparative Sociology
Tim Reeskens and Wim van Oorschot
redistribution preferences and welfare chauvinism
Disentangling the 'New Liberal Dilemma': On the relation between general welfare
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DOI: 10.1177/0020715212451987
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IJ
CS
Disentangling the ‘New Liberal
Dilemma’: On the relation
between general welfare
redistribution preferences and
welfare chauvinism
Tim Reeskens
KU Leuven, Belgium and University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Wim van Oorschot
Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Abstract
In the present ‘Age of Migration’, public policy as well as social scientists are puzzled by the ‘New Liberal
Dilemma’ (Newton, 2007) of finding popular support for welfare programs that have been installed in
times of cultural homogeneity. In this article, we are interested in the question of whether opinions about
immigrants’ access to welfare provisions originate from general preferences towards welfare redistribution,
and whether this association is moderated by the national context. Using the 2008 wave of the European
Social Survey, we show that particularly those who favor that welfare benefits should in the first place target
the neediest, place the highest restrictions on welfare provisions for immigrants. In addition, the relationship
between preferences for welfare redistribution and opinions about immigrants’ access to social welfare is
moderated by a national context of cultural heterogeneity. We conclude the article by drawing implications
for public policy.
Keywords
Deservingness theory, ethnic-cultural diversity, European Social Survey, multilevel analysis, redistributive
justice principles, welfare chauvinism
1. Introduction
For some time now, politicians of European welfare states have envisaged the ‘New Liberal
Dilemma’ (Newton, 2007).
1
That is, in the present ‘Age of Migration’ (Castles and Miller, 2003) it
is difficult to reconcile the integration of immigrants with finding popular support for welfare state
Corresponding author:
Tim Reeskens, Center for Sociological Research, KU Leuven, Parkstraat 45, Box 3601, Leuven 3000, Belgium
Email: tim.reeskens@soc.kuleuven.be
Article
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Reeskens and van Oorschot 121
programs that came into effect in times of cultural homogeneity. In particular, in the aftermath of
the worldwide financial crisis, public opinion further polarized on the issue of immigration, with
rising success for right-wing populist parties that fuelled debates on restricted welfare access to
immigrants. Polarization of public opinion over immigration occurred not only in countries with
established anti-immigration parties, such as Belgium, France and Denmark (Kitschelt, 1997), but
also in established welfare states where populist parties received widespread electoral support,
including the Netherlands (Aarts and Thomassen, 2008), Sweden (Rydgren and Ruth, 2011), and
Finland (Arter, 2010).
Social scientists, too, have taken notice of this dilemma, though to date empirical findings are
lacking. Although immigrant flows to European countries seem to be unrelated to welfare state
generosity (Hooghe et al., 2008; Mau and Burckhardt, 2009; Stichnot and van der Straeten, 2011),
in most countries immigrants rely relatively more upon welfare provisions and are also perceived
as more dependent than other risk groups (Boeri et al., 2002; Muenz and Fassmann, 2004).
Moreover, despite the fact that citizens of foreign descent are more in need, they are nonetheless
deemed by mass publics to be far less deserving of benefits than the native born. Bommes and
Geddes (2000) conclude their seminal volume on the relationship between immigration and wel-
fare state with the insight that immigrants as a group have become the ‘new undeserving poor’ of
Western societies. This is corroborated by van Oorschot (2006), who shows that Europeans per-
ceive immigrants in a far less deserving light than other needy groups like the elderly, disabled
persons, and unemployed.
However, immigrants’ low level of perceived deservingness does not necessarily mean that the
general public is against granting any welfare rights to immigrants. Welfare chauvinism in the soft
sense, referring to lower deservingness of immigrants compared to natives (Van der Waal et al.,
2010), does not equal welfare chauvinism in the strict sense, referring to a desire to exclude immi-
grants from any welfare provision (Koning, 2011). Studies of European opinions on social rights
for immigrants showed that only a minority would prefer not to grant any social rights to immi-
grants at all, while a majority would agree to giving immigrants equal access to welfare provisions
only after they have acquired formal citizenship and/or have worked and paid taxes (Gorodzeisky
and Semyonov, 2009; Mewes and Mau, 2012).
In this study, we aim at deepening insights on welfare chauvinism by analyzing whether the
conditioning criteria that people might apply to immigrants’ access to social welfare provisions are
rooted in more general ideas about how welfare should be redistributed. In a long tradition, with
theoretical (Deutsch, 1975; Miller, 1999; Rawls, 1971) and empirical analyses (Aalberg, 2003;
Arts and Gelissen, 2001), students of social solidarity identified three main principles of welfare
redistribution: 1) merit (or equity): citizens who contribute most to the welfare state should be
entitled to higher levels of provision; 2) need: welfare provision should (only or especially) be
directed to citizens in highest need; 3) equality: all citizens should be entitled to the same level of
provision, irrespective of their contributions and status. From a theoretical perspective, it is plausi-
ble to assume a direct link between preferences for principles of welfare redistribution and condi-
tioning criteria associated with immigrants’ social rights.
2
Empirically, however, this link has not
yet been identified.
In this article we will extend theoretical ideas about the relationship between general prefer-
ences for welfare redistribution and welfare chauvinism, and test them empirically using data from
the 2008/2009 wave of the European Social Survey, controlling for a number of relevant variables
at individual and context level. As for the latter, we assume that people’s ideas about welfare redis-
tribution and immigrants’ welfare rights are embedded in and affected by country-specific cultural
contexts. We begin with a review of the relevant literature and propose specific hypotheses that
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122 International Journal of Comparative Sociology 53(2)
will guide the analysis. Then we present our data and methodology, followed by a presentation and
discussion of our results. We conclude with a reflection on the implications of our findings for the
future of social insurance schemes in the face of increasing immigrant diversity.
2. Welfare chauvinism and principles of redistributive justice
The relationship between diversity and the welfare state is rather tense (Alesina and Glaezer, 2004;
Banting et al., 2006). Identifying the state – likewise the ‘welfare state’ – inherently requires delin-
eating who is ‘in’ (citizens of the state) and ‘out’ (non-citizens). Social theorists frequently discuss
the linkages between welfare redistribution and citizenship (Miller, 1999), as redistribution in
modern welfare states requires making sacrifices with ‘anonymous others whom we do not know,
will probably never meet, and whose ethnic descent, religion and way of life differs from our own’
(Kymlicka, 2001: 225). The symbolic boundaries that delineated the ‘anonymous others’ present
within national boundaries, once included social class and ideological discrepancies (Dalton, 2002;
Lipset and Rokkan, 1967). These days, however, immigration – with its encompassing distinction
of the insider and the outsider – dominates as a social cleavage that polarizes not only public opin-
ion but also cuts across former social cleavages (Kriesi et al., 2006; Van der Brug and van Spanje,
2009).
While the degree to which Europeans generally perceive immigrants as equal citizens of their
country fills many research agendas (Bail, 2008; Wright, 2011), from a welfare studies perspective
they are seen as a least deserving group (van Oorschot, 2006). In general, people are more willing
to provide support to people they can identify with, to people who helped them in the past, and to
people who cannot be blamed for their neediness or have no personal control over their economic
situation (Coughlin, 1980; De Swaan, 1988; Raijman et al., 2003; van Oorschot, 2006). For immi-
grants in particular, low perceived deservingness is further compounded by concerns regarding: 1)
identity, as there is a cultural distance between native and foreign-born residents; 2) reciprocity, as
immigrants are new residents of their host country and have not contributed much yet, if at all; and
3) control, as immigrants’ choice to emigrate from their origin country is often well-considered.
3
However, one’s perception of immigrants as less deserving does not necessarily imply a desire
to categorically exclude them from social welfare provisions. Recent studies (Mewes and Mau,
2012; van der Waal et al., 2010, 2011) on European opinions about the timing of and the conditions
under which newcomers can make appeal to welfare state provisions find that only a small propor-
tion of Europeans wants to take this step. A larger proportion of Europeans favors granting immi-
grants social welfare rights, but only after they acquire citizenship or after they made significant
tax contributions. Here, we are interested in the question of how these welfare access opinions are
related to more general principles of redistributive justice, and thus in showing empirically how
and to what degree such opinions about immigrants’ social rights originate from a broader perspec-
tive on social justice.
In the context of the welfare state, social justice concerns principles that ‘provide a way of
assigning rights and duties in the basic institutions of society and [they] define the appropriate
distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation’ (Rawls, 1971: 4; see also Konow,
2003). There is a continuing debate on the extent and meaning of social justice principles (Deutsch,
1975; Konow, 2003), and a distinction is usually made between redistributive and procedural jus-
tice (Rothstein, 1998). In matters of welfare redistribution, three principles are seen as central:
merit (also referred to as ‘equity’ or ‘desert’), need, and equality (see Konow, 2003; Miller, 1999).
The principle of merit says that making significant contributions to the welfare state, for example,
through taxed incomes, or having a long labor-market trajectory, should be rewarded accordingly in
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Reeskens and van Oorschot 123
case of an occurring social risk, that is, higher benefits. The merit principle is practically applied by
organizing social protection through social insurances (Clasen and Van Oorschot, 2002), and as such
it is the central principle directing redistribution in conservative welfare states where the reproduction
of social hierarchies and statuses through welfare is valued (Arts and Gelissen, 2001; Esping-
Andersen, 1990). Applied to social rights for immigrants, this principle requires that access be earned
by way of contribution to the welfare state. Our first hypothesis therefore is that a preference for the
merit principle is positively associated with granting immigrants access to social rights after they
have worked and paid taxes for a certain period (H1).
The principle of equality says that all members of a group should be entitled to the same level
and quality of welfare, irrespective of how much one has contributed or how needy one is. In prac-
tice, this principle is mostly realized by providing citizenship-based flat-rate benefits (or earnings-
related benefits with a small bandwith between benefit floor and ceiling). As such, it is central to
the universalistic Nordic social-democratic welfare states, which guarantee a high and largely
equal standard of living to all citizens (Arts and Gelissen, 2001; Esping-Andersen, 1990).
However, as emphasized by Scandinavian scholars, this model of welfare state redistribution
also draws legitimacy from a legal perspective that defines it in terms of citizenship status (Korpi,
2003; Korpi and Palme, 1998). This implies that welfare universalism does not automatically
extend to any person living in the country,
4
and raises questions about the distinction between those
who are ‘in’ (have citizenship), and those who are ‘out’ (do not have this status).
5
Although, from
a sociological perspective, perceiving people as being as ‘in’ or ‘out’ of one’s group is a reflection
of shared symbolic boundaries (Lamont and Molnar, 2002), which may not always overlap with
legally defined boundaries, we assume that upon their arrival immigrants are not defined by most
Europeans as belonging to the in-group of formal citizens and that they also are not included in
their socially defined in-group either. However, for those who are in favor of applying the equality
principle to the redistribution of welfare rights, the acquisition of citizenship status by migrants
may signal a turning point leading to accepting them as new members of their perceived in-group.
Our second hypothesis then is that a preference for the principle of equality is positively associated
with granting immigrants access to social rights after they acquire citizenship (H2).
The need principle posits that only those who are in real need should be provided with state
welfare. It relates to the understanding that the neediest (e.g. low income groups or those with an
inconsistent labor market trajectory) should be entitled to higher social benefits to prevent an accu-
mulation of social risks, while those who are better off are seen as being able to provide for them-
selves. Means-tested benefits are the core instrument for the practical application of this principle
in welfare provision, and it is central to the liberal type of welfare state (Arts and Gelissen, 2001;
Esping-Andersen, 1990).
There may be two contradictory ways in which a preference for a redistribution based on need is
related to conditions for granting welfare rights to immigrants. According to one strand in the litera-
ture, favoring a redistribution that supports the neediest relates to a perspective of enlightenment,
altruism and civic responsibility (d’Anjou et al., 1995; Tyran and Sausgruber, 2006), which could
prevail among all classes. This enlightenment perspective on need suggests that immigrants’ social
rights be granted immediately upon arrival, as immigrant groups are high on the hierarchy of groups
with social needs (H3a). A contrasting view on the need principle is that it represents self-interest by
the have-nots who are the main target group for needs-based welfare provision. Empirical research
suggests that this self-interest perspective on need might actually be true, since in a sample of
European people the socioeconomically ‘have-nots’ are especially prone to endorse the need crite-
rion (Reeskens and van Oorschot, 2011). In addition, we also know from empirical research that
lower class citizens, who are often in competition with immigrants, are most chauvinist when it
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