A rich literature has emerged over the last three decades examining citizen’s varied willingness in industrialized democracies to fund the welfare state in the face of increasing immigration-induced diversity. Initially driven by nimble speculation, but little empirical support, that the European welfare state in toto will disappear as a result of immigration, exemplified by statements such as ‘When the welfare state is seen as something for “them” paid by “us”, its days as a consensual solution to societal problems are numbered’(Freeman 1986, 62). Nathan Glazer speculated similarly: ‘What will happen to European social benefits as they are seen to go disproportionately to immigrants? One may well see a withdrawal in European countries from the most advanced frontiers of social policy… because they are seen as programs for “others”’(1998, 17). Those predictions of wholesale withdrawal of natives from the European welfare state project have not come to pass. As Harold Wilensky (2002, 652) put it: ‘Even the lawless skinheads in Germany identify their biggest worry as Zukunftssicherheit, or “future security’”. Instead many European countries have instituted stricter border controls and stricter eligibility criteria for asylum-seekers and, additionally, policy makers have come under rising pressures from an increasing number of their electorate to erect barriers in terms of access to welfare benefits, sometimes termed ‘exclusive solidarity’(Lefkofridi and Michel 2014). This exclusionary distinction drives a wedge between anybody who is ‘different’ from the natives in terms of not only their constitutionally protected status qua citizens but in terms of ‘race’, ethnicity …
Crepaz, M. M. L., & Uslaner, E. M. (2021). ‘Walk a mile in my shoes!’ Ethno-cultural Empathy, Welfare Chauvinism and the Limits of Community in Post-migration Crisis Germany. In N. Holtug (Ed.), National Identity and Social Cohesion. essay, ECPR Press.
