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VAM-Velferd, arbeid og migrasjon

Immigration and the Political Sustainability of the Welfare State

Alternative title: Innvandring og velferdsstatens politiske bærekraft

Awarded: NOK 5.4 mill.

The main aim of the project is to improve our understanding of the impact of immigration on the political sustainability of the welfare state. In one part of the project we examine the political sustainability by exploring the relationship between voters' anti-immigrant sentiments and their welfare state preferences. We have conducted a survey experiment in Norway which shows that support for an increase in the child benefit is sensitive to information about the eligibility to child benefit for labour immigrants with children living in the labour immigrant's country of origin, but not sensitive to information about the eligibility of newly arrived refugees (published in Scandinavian Political Studies). Moreover, we have studied whether sharing room with a soldier with a non-western background during boot camp influences views om immigrants and behaviour in a trust game. We find that views on immigrants' work ethic changes, but not support for welfare dualism (published in European Journal of Political Research). In the trust game we find that some groups show more trust towards minorities (not yet published conference paper). In the second part of the project we examine the political sustainability by exploring the impact of immigration on voting and welfare state policies. In one paper we study how labour market competition with immigrants influences party choice. The results suggest that the group of voters experiencing a downward pressure on wages due to immigration become polarized; one group of voters move to the left, one group move to the right (paper under review). In a second paper we study the relationship between the share of immigrants in the population and changes in the genersoity of the welfare programs. We find a negative effect on the generosity, but the estimates are too uncertain to make clear conclusions (paper under review). In a third paper we study whether middle class voters' party choice is sensitive to the politization of the immigration issue, and we find that middle class voters become less likely to vote for left-leaning parties when immigration becomes politized (published in Comparative European Politics). Project web-page: http://www.samfunnsforskning.no/english/projects/innvandring-og-velferdsstatens-politiske-berekraft-eng.html

The main aim of the project is to improve our understanding of the impact of immigration on the political sustainability of the welfare state. In one part of the project we examine the political sustainability by exploring the relationship between immigration, views on immigrants and welfare state preferences among the voters. We are in particular interested in voters' support for a dualization of welfare benefits where access to benefits depends on for instance citizenship. To examine this issue with an aim of making causal inferences we conduct survey experiments in Norway and Denmark (which has different experiences with welfare dualism) and we exploit that soldiers doing their compulsory military service are randomly allocated to serve and live with a soldier of minority background and study how views on immigrants and welfare state preferences change during military service for those who serve with a soldier with a minority background and those who did not. In the second part of the project we examine the political sustainability by exploring the impact of immigration on welfare state policy platforms of the political parties, and the development of welfare state policy platforms of anti-immigration parties. Here we conduct qualitative studies of anti-immigration parties in the Scandinavian countries, as well as parties across the OECD area. Both parts have a cross-national, longitudinal research design, and the quantitative analyses rely on Instrumental Variables techniques to give estimates a causal interpretation. In one subproject we also examine the direct link between immigration flows and the development of social insurance policies, thus, we examine how immigration influences both the demand and the supply of welfare state benefits.

Funding scheme:

VAM-Velferd, arbeid og migrasjon