Thesis

Intra-EU Labour Migration and Attitudes Towards the Welfare State 103 tion may influence social policy preferences. Figure 5.1 takes two concepts discussed in the literature: (1) Social Distance and (2) Perceived Deservingness and combines them with the notion of ‘Difficulty to Exclude’, namely how easy or difficult is it to exclude an immigrant from accessing welfare programmes, in order to present the idea that the way they interact will determine the prevailing mechanism. Social Distance (close/distant) and Perceived Deservingness (high/low) are on the x-axis, and Difficulty to Exclude is on the y-axis. Therefore, an immigrant that is easy to exclude from the welfare state and for whom the perceived deservingness is low, or the social distance is distant, then the likely prevailing mechanism for determining attitudes towards redistribution is welfare chauvinism. In other words, a native will express a preference for ring-fencing benefits for natives because the migrant is easy to exclude from accessing welfare, they feel little to no solidarity towards that migrant, and/or they feel they are not deserving of receiving welfare. Equally, an immigrant that is close in social distance and/or a native feels is deserving of welfare and is therefore easy to extend solidarity to but is difficult to ring-fence benefits from (an EU mobile citizen with the right to access the social welfare systems of their host nations, for example) may mean that the prevailing mechanism influencing preferences is the compensation hypothesis. Figure 5.1: Theoretical conceptualisation of the role different types of mobility may have on redistribution preferences Close Perceived Deservingness Social Distance Difficulty to Exclude Distant Easy Difficult High Low Preference for Chauvinism Preference for Chauvinism Preference for Compensation Preference for Retrenchment

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjY0ODMw