Talking Immigration – Changing attitudes to immigrants’ access to welfare benefits and services

With increasing mobility Europe- and world-wide, different forms of welfare chauvinism emerge in public and political discourse. Populist pledges to restrict access to welfare provision to citizens are embraced even by mainstream political parties, although the proposals represent a wide spectrum of exclusivist measures (Schumacher and Kersbergen, 2017; Afonso and Rennwald, 2018). Public opinion surveys also highlight the variety of preferences for welfare chauvinism – showing limited support for total exclusion and stronger preferences for contribution- or citizenship-based conditions of accessing welfare benefits and services (Meuleman et al., 2018). However, our knowledge is limited on the reasons behind such preferences and how preferences for restrictions vary in relation to specific groups of immigrants – such as refugees or economic migrants. Do people differentiate between immigrants? If yes, what considerations make a difference in relation to immigrants’ access to welfare? This paper sheds light on the diversity of public preferences to restrict immigrants’ access to welfare benefits and services. Complementing the findings of surveys on welfare chauvinism, it analyses democratic forums in Norway and the United Kingdom. This deliberative approach enables us to study public attitudes as shared by people through social interaction and to examine the justifications behind restrictive preferences. This paper argues that attitudes to immigrants’ access to welfare benefits and services cannot be simplified to one single attitude either for or against inclusion of immigrants in welfare state. On contrary, we claim that attitudes shift between preferences for inclusion and exclusion depending on the specific groups of immigrants and specific social circumstances considered. Approaching attitudes to immigrants’ inclusion in welfare state through perceptions of welfare deservingness (van Oorschot, 2000), this paper finds that people use different framings when talking about specific groups of immigrants and their deservingness. Concerning economic migrants, a practical framing is applied – based on perceptions of economic migrants’ achievements contributing to the perceived needs of the receiving country. In contrast, refugees’ deservingness relies on a moral framing reflecting the perceived neediness of refugees. However, the paper finds how moral justifications change and fade as the time refugees spend in the country passes. Besides elaborating on differences in preferences for inclusion/exclusion of specific groups of immigrants, this paper contributes to the literature on welfare chauvinism by analysing the changes in public preferences for restricting immigrants’ access to welfare benefits and services – stressing the relevance of the time-dimension and the perceived needs of the receiving country.