Welfare solidarity in multi-ethnic societies: can social investment reduce the anti-immigrant bias?

Abstract

Migration flows have diversified western societies, challenging the political viability of inclusive welfare states. This is very clear in research on perceptions of deservingness to social benefits, which consistently shows that immigrants are considered as less deserving of collective help than natives. At the same time, welfare states are being reoriented towards social investment, putting more emphasis on services that strengthen human capital and improve access to employment rather than on redistribution. In this article we ask whether the shift towards a social investment welfare state is likely to reduce the immigrant deservingness penalty. Theoretically, we rely on two perspectives: social trust and identity theory. Following the literature on social trust, we expect the reorientation of welfare states towards social investment to reduce the negative impact of diversity on solidarity, as those interventions are to an extent immune to free-riding. Alternatively, according to social identity theory, we expect a similar in-group bias independent of the intervention. We rely on vignette experiments conducted in 2021 in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US to compare the immigrant deservingness penalty between social compensation and social investment interventions. Results show no difference between the immigrant deservingness penalty across the social intervention types, suggesting exclusionary attitudes are driven by in-group favouritism.