Immigrant Exclusion in the Shadows – A Study on the Relationship Between Unemployment Benefit Generosity and Social Protection Among Migrants in European Welfare States

The study addresses the so-called generosity hypothesis which states that countries with developed social protection systems are more likely to grant foreign-born immigrants access to social benefits and services. Generous welfare states are built on egalitarianism and collective responsibility for social risks, including those associated with migration. Both foreign-born immigrants and native-born citizens are therefore expected to enjoy an overall higher level of social protection countries with developed welfare states. The aim of the study is to complement this argument with an inclusion of welfare conditionality as a moderating factor. Foreign-born immigrants may be more likely to gain formal access to social benefits and services in more generous welfare states, but this does not mean that they are automatically more likely to receive them. Social rights are to varying degrees conditional on, for example, a claimants’ work history, prior contributions or proof of need. The prime example in this regard is unemployment insurance. Newcomers may not be formally excluded from financial support in case of unemployment, but they are less likely to fulfil requirements such as a minimum length and level of paid contributions. Unemployment insurances thus profit, first and foremost, the (native-born) core workforce, leading to larger financial gaps between the foreign- and native-born in more developed benefit systems. Preliminary empirical analyses with data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) provide supporting evidence for the proposed hypotheses. Non-European immigrants who were unemployed for one month or more prior to data collection are significantly less likely to receive unemployment benefits than native-born individuals with a similar record of unemployment. This gap widens with the level of benefit generosity, indicating a negative relationship between welfare state generosity and migrants’ social protection. Formal incorporation, measured with help of the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), seems to moderate the divide between migrants and natives to some degree. The effect is overall smaller in countries which grant immigrants easy access to labour markets and social rights. However, it does not disappear, suggesting that non-European migrants are still less likely to receive benefits in more generous welfare states. The results of this study have profound implications for public and academic debates about the social protection of migrants. They show that standard approaches of comparative welfare research are insufficient for the study migration and integration. Established expectations about the outcomes of generous welfare states cannot be directly extrapolated to what is, after all, a growing share of the European population. A sound conceptualisation of migrants’ social protection needs to include the actual receipt of benefits. Both scholars and policy-makers might otherwise miss that immigrants can be systematically excluded from social protection in the shadows of seemingly inclusive and generous welfare states.