The Institutional Logic of Welfare Nationalism: The Status-Quo-Heuristic of Public Attitudes to Migrants’ Entitlement to Social Rights in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark

Migrants’ entitlement to social rights have become a salient political issues in many European countries. The article analyses welfare nationalism in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark by means of original data that both measure how the public think the rules “are” and how they “should be”. The theoretical expectation is that due to the complexity of the issue and a general risk averseness, the public is likely to use the current entitlement criteria as a guideline when forming opinions about migrants’ social entitlements. As expected, the article finds that a majority of Germans, Dutch and Danes opt for entitlement rules that reflect how they think the current entitlement rules are for both EU- and non-EU-migrants. The micro-level link between are and should be is stable across subgroups, even among voters of populist right wing parties, and remains significant after control for standard background variables. Thereby the article points to an institutional logic, which is different for the classic selectivism/universalism argument.