Inclusive Redistribution and Perceptions of Membership in Europe & North America

• In Event: Nationalism and Redistribution

Abstract

Several previous studies of public opinion have shown that immigrants are seen as less deserving of welfare benefits than native-born citizens. However, there is no consensus on the explanation for this finding, or on how to build greater public support for more inclusive redistribution. In a previous paper drawing on Canadian data, we argued that support for redistribution to immigrants and racialized minorities is powerfully tied to perceptions of their “membership commitment”: that is, whether they are seen as committed to the larger society and willing to make sacrifices for it (Harell et al. 2021).

In this paper, we attempt to test this hypothesis in the comparative setting using an original seven-country survey conducted in 2021-2022 (n=14,000) to 1) explore perceptions of the levels of attachment and commitment of immigrants to the host society in Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, Sweden, and the US and 2) test the effect of these perceptions of membership commitment on more inclusive redistributive attitudes. In doing so, we provide a comparative test of recent findings in Canada of the powerful relationship between perceptions of shared membership and support for redistribution.

Our study offers the first systematic test of the extent to which immigrants suffer a “membership penalty” within host societies, and how these membership penalties vary across different Western countries with different citizenship and welfare regimes. We conclude with a broader discussion of the barriers that immigrants and other marginalized groups face in being perceived as equally committed as native-born citizens, and how these barriers might be addressed.

Authors

• Allison Harell, Université du Québec à Montréal

• Keith Gordon Banting, Queen's University

• Will Kymlicka, Queens University