Intra-EU Labour Migration and Attitudes Towards the Welfare State 97 aiming to understand how certain micro- and macro-level factors can cause changes in support for redistribution1. First, I test whether intra-EU labour mobility has a direct influence on preferences for redistribution by distinguishing between different categories of immigration and exploring whether or not they affect support for redistribution in different ways. I use the typical indicator of ‘foreign-born as percentage of the population’ to test the effect of general level of immigration, alongside which I test a more specific type of mobility using an innovative indicator for mobile labour from the post-2004 expansion Member States2 developed using the EU-LFS (Fenwick, 2021). Uncovering this previously hidden population allows us to directly study the role that increased intraEU labour mobility post-2004 may have had on social policy preferences. Second, I test the two key assumptions of the compensation hypothesis: (1) that increased mobility increases individual job insecurity and (2) increased job insecurity in turn increases preferences for redistribution. These two mechanisms within the compensation hypothesis are fundamental assumptions to its functioning and can be tested independently in order to augment the analysis alongside the broader argument mentioned above. This article is structured as follows, first I provide a brief overview of the literature and posit our hypotheses in light of this review. Next, the data and methods are discussed before presenting the results and analysis. Finally, some final remarks are provided and the broader implications of the findings considered. 5.2 Immigration and redistributive preferences Previous literature is generally split into two camps that argue for opposing directional influences between increasing immigration and individual policy preferences for redistribution, either expansion or retrenchment of the welfare state. In the case of retrenchment, a number of causal mechanisms through which immigration may erode support for social protection are proposed. For example, cultural threat and the anti-solidarity hypothesis theorise that changes in the cultural make-up of society may weaken the solidarity between individuals and thus the support for a risk-pooling mechanism across society (Heath & Richards, 2020; van Oorschot, 2008). The financial threat theory argues that natives may consider migrants overrepresented in their receipt of benefits and thus placing too much pressure on public services so question the sustainability of the welfare state (Magni, 1 e.g., Svallfors (1997), Alesina and Angelitos (2005), Alesina and La Ferrara (2005), Dallinger (2010), Epple and Romer (1991), Moene and Wallerstein (2001). 2 Which, for simplicity, we refer to from this point onwards as Central and Eastern European (CEE) labour mobility.
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