The Politics of the Immigration-Welfare Nexus: Actors, Frames and Positions

Abstract

Migration affects the welfare state and the welfare state influences migration flows. This observation, highlighted in a number of recent publications (Boräng 2018, Manow 2018), drives scholars to question when, where and why both phenomena interact (Afonso and Devitt 2016). Research on the migration-welfare nexus has covered many levels of analysis; from micro-level attitudes studies to macro-level investigation of social or migration policy reform in times of high migration flows. However, a deeper understanding and examination of the meso level of politics –the actors that play an important role in setting the agenda for how citizens think, and how macro-level policy changes are debated and implemented – is rather a lacuna. With regard to welfare and migration issues, there is an emerging body of literature which argues that populist radical right (PRR) parties increasingly engage in welfare debates through promulgating exclusive welfare for natives, often referred to as welfare chauvinism or populism. Moreover, trade unions, employers’ associations, social movements or religious actors are important interest groups who can mobilise the public with their strategic claims in public, but pend between protecting native workers against labour market competition, and supporting universal rights for everyone. Consequently, to what extent do we observe a discursive change and political conflicts in framing and legitimising social policies (reforms) during election campaigns or in party manifestos from a universalist to an exclusivist understanding of national welfare policies? The panel sheds light on different actors and how they frame the migration-welfare-nexus in public debates, plenary sessions or in their public sub-arenas such as in trade union member magazines, online or offline communication to members and in interaction between parties and these interest groups.

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