I See Where You’re Coming from...and It Matters: How Migrant Origin Shapes Support for Social Programs

• In Event: 3251 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 18. Sending Contexts

Abstract

The recent surge in migration has received substantial scholarly attention to the question of whether increased migration affects public support for social policy (Brady & Finnigan 2014; Ponce 2018). However, we still have scant knowledge on how migratory flows today affect people’s support for social policies across the globe, and particularly in advanced industrial states with established social welfare programs. In this paper, we explore the relationship between immigration and support for social policies along the axes of time and country of origin. We explore whether public support for social policies changed within the last decade, with respect to migratory flows to advanced industrialized states. We also test whether the relationship varies by migrants’ country of origin, adding a new dimension to the existing scholarship. Not all migrants are perceived equally by the public. We argue that this is an important factor when making sense of people’s attitudes toward welfare, especially given that eligibility requirements and targeted social groups vary between different policies. Accordingly, we evaluate whether migrants from rich versus non-rich countries leads to different levels of public support for social policies at the nation level. Our results suggest that public support indeed varies in valence and intensity, with respect to migrants’ country of origin. We argue that these may have serious theoretical and policy implications, particularly today, as migration becomes an increasingly politicized issue, and a popular target of populism.

Authors

• Selen Güler, University of Washington

• Mark Igra, University of Washington