Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between perceptions of immigration and preferences for redistribution, using survey data from the European Social Survey. Some recent literature argues that hostility toward immigrants will reduce the preferred level of redistribution, primarily because people care about who they redistribute towards (the anti-solidarity hypothesis). Less attention has been paid to the possibility that immigration might be perceived as increasing the risk of income loss, something that should increase the preferred level of redistribution (the compensation hypothesis). This paper finds some evidence in favour of both hypotheses. Furthermore, the paper argues that anti-solidarity effects should be stronger in countries classified within the Social Democratic welfare state regime type and compensation effects should be stronger in countries within the Conservative welfare state regime type. There is some empirical support for this argument in the data.
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Notes
Data are from the social expenditure database (OECD, 2004), except for Slovenia (the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia, http://www.stat.si/eng/novice_poglej.asp?ID=882) and Israel (Kop, 2003).
See Moene and Wallerstein (2001) for a formal model incorporating both motives of welfare state support. The ideas put forward in this paper can be derived directly from their model. In their model, a higher probability of losing income in the future increases the preferred level of spending, while a lower level of solidarity decreases the preferred level of spending.
Sniderman et al. (2004) make a similar argument about how economic and cultural variables can simultaneously be important for views on immigrants.
The data I use allow me to do this type of analysis on a Southern European cluster and a Central and Eastern European cluster also. There are, however, problems with such analysis. First, it is not clear whether these two clusters can be considered as welfare state regime types in the Esping-Andersen terminology (see Arts and Gelissen, 2002; Jæger, 2006, 160). Second, even if one can make an empirical case in support of treating these clusters as distinct regime types, the absence of a theoretical description of why these countries operate under a similar logic makes it difficult to derive hypothesis of how the particularities of the welfare state institutions in the Southern European regime and the Central and Eastern European regime will affect the relationship between the immigration variables and redistribution support.
Countries included are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. The Czech Republic is excluded due to missing data on the question about father's education level.
Results are almost identical if I use the original coding, and no conclusions are affected.
The same is true if we replace rights and wages with the additive indexes.
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Finseraas, H. Immigration and Preferences for Redistribution: An Empirical Analysis of European Survey Data. Comp Eur Polit 6, 407–431 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2008.3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2008.3