Immigration, Integration, and Support for Redistribution in Europe

Bibliographic Data

ID8042822
AuthorsBrian Burgoon (0000-0002-7300-0541, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume66
Issue3
Pages365-405
Publication date2014-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWorld Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-8871 • E-ISSN: 1086-3338
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s0043887114000100
OpenAlexW2100984404
LanguageEN
Citations received63
References cited55

Immigration poses individual or collective economic risks that might increase citizen support for government redistribution, but it can also generate fiscal pressure or undermine social solidarity to diminish such support. These offsetting conditions obscure the net effects of immigration for welfare states. This article explores whether immigration's effects are mediated by the economic and social integration of immigrants. Integration can be conceptualized and measured as involving the degree to which immigrants suffer unemployment rates, depend on welfare-state benefits, and harbor social attitudes similarly to the native population. Such integration may alter how immigration reduces solidarity and imposes fiscal and macroeconomic pressures, but does not much alter how immigration spurs economic risks for natives. Where migrants are more integrated by such measures, immigration should have less negative or more positive implications for native support for government redistribution and welfare states than where migrants are less integrated. The article explores these arguments using survey data for twenty-two European countries between 2002 and 2010. The principal finding is that economic integration, more than sociocultural integration, softens the tendency of immigration to undermine support for redistributive policies

Demographic economics · Development economics · Economic growth · Economic integration · Economics · European Social Survey · Government (linguistics · Immigration · International economics · Market economy · Political science · Population · Redistribution (election · Sociology · Solidarity · Unemployment · Welfare · Welfare state · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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