Labor migration and the moral sustainability of the Norwegian welfare state

We have conducted several web-based surveys in collaboration with Norstat and the Norwegian Citizen Panel (UiB) to investigate how intra-EU immigration affects attitudes towards the welfare state. By the use of various survey experiments, we have shown that immigration weakens people's preferences for redistribution in general and their willingness to share the welfare state with immigrants in particular (welfare chauvinism). Using transnational datasets we have made several discoveries. Among them that welfare chauvinist attitudes deteriorate with increasing levels of immigration. This goes against findings made by others and we rationalize it by use of so-called "intergroup contact" theory, which says that xenophobic attitudes decrease in the amount of contact between natives and immigrants. Moreover, we have found that cross-national differences in redistribution preferences partly can be explained by intra-EU immigration - the more intra-EU immigrants a country has (as a percentage of the population), the less its population is willing redistribute. Based on survey experiments we have measured welfare chauvinism in Norway: Norwegians believe it fair that immigrants should receive two-thirds the benefit level of natives, that they have to work twice as much in order to qualify for benefits, and that maximum duration of benefits should be twice as long for natives than for immigrants. Furthermore, this welfare chauvinism is not due to negative stereotyping about immigrants, e.g. that they are welfare tourists; the data strongly suggest that Norwegians think it fair that immigrants should have reduced access to the welfare state precisely because they are immigrants. In recent years, OECD countries have faced pressure to cut the costs of social security and different strategies have been utilized to achieve this: a) Stricter eligibility requirements. b) Reduced level of benefits. c) Reduced maximum duration of benefits. In order to better understand the political support for these three strategies, we have conducted survey experiments to measure which of them that the general population prefers. A key difference between them is how they distribute the burden of cost reductions between different benefit recipients: Should the benefit reduction be equally distributed among all recipients (reduce the benefit level) or should it be concentrated on some groups (tighten eligibility)? We find large heterogeneity in how people make the trade-off and thus which of the strategies for cost reduction that they prefer. Right-wingers typically prefer to tighten the eligibility criteria, while left-wingers typically prefer to reduce the benefit level. In collaboration with the Choice lab at NHH we have completed a wide-ranging economic experiment on people's attitudes towards what we call "false positives" and "false negatives". A false positive is to provide social security to one who does not "deserve" it, while a false negative is not to provide social security to one who does "deserve" it. The experiment included recruitment of workers through an international online marketplace (mturk), as well as web-based public opinion surveys in Norway and the US. An interesting finding is that political rightists are more afraid than political leftists of making false positives, while political leftists are more afraid of making false negatives. This is the first experimental study of people?s social preferences in a setting where they are unable to implement the fair distribution and have to make a trade-off between false positives and false negatives. In collaboration with the European University Institute in Florence we have studied the attitudes of political parties in Europe related to issues of intra-EU immigration and the fact that EU immigrants have full access to the receiving country's welfare schemes. We base our findings on "euandi" (read: EU and I) - a voting advice application (VAA) for the 2014 EU parliamentary elections. 270 political parties were coded in a collaborative effort between the parties themselves (so-called self-placement) and 120 academics. The findings indicate that welfare chauvinistic attitudes are prominent in many party types and in most EU countries, but that there is considerable variation. In collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, we have interviewed 70 Polish labor immigrants in Norway. We have several interesting findings, including issues related to undeclared work. The empirical material made it possible to develop new theory about why immigrants - and people in general - engage in undeclared work. Furthermore, we have studied the experiences of Poles in Norway, focusing on two arenas: work place and social life. A particular focus of ours is the many sacrifices that the immigrants make. Project web-page: http://www.uib.no/en/sampol/labour-migration-and-the-welfare-state

The 2004 enlargement of the European Union, with the ensuing movements of Accession 8 migrants, has and will continue to have a profound impact on migration patterns in Norway. Both the demographic and geographic characteristics of immigrants are shifting, and much of the hostility directed towards the traditional "asylum seekers" now turns towards the new East European migrants. The aim of the research project Labour Migration and the Moral Sustainability of the Norwegian Welfare State is to examine cent ral aspects of this new immigration: 1) The first part of the project, Labour immigration and the welfare state, examines various aspects of the welfare state in light of the new immigration patterns in Norway. Firstly, we study the extent to which these new patterns threaten the continued support of the welfare state in general and Norwegian welfare state in particular, and how they affect and shape preferences on how to make moral trade-offs in the design of welfare polices. Secondly, we study the extent to which labor migration to Norway is labour induced by conducting a qualitative case study of how poles living as labor migrants in Norway make use of the welfare system. Thirdly, we study how the Norwegian and Polish press portray the migration from Poland to Norway, e.g. the extent to which it accurately reflects reality. 2) The second part of the project, Segregation, economic dependence, and gender equalization, examines the importance of social network denominators among the new labor migrants in the value creating system in Norway. Furthermore, the project will calculate how much of the value creation in Norway that are reaped by foreign owners and employees in sectors and regions, as a proxy on how dependent value creation in Norway is on work force migration. Finally, the gender composition of the Norwegian and foreign work force will be compared to see how much, if at all, migration reverses the gender equalization of Norwegian industries.