This dissertation aims to answer the overarching research question: “to what extent does immigration structurally and conceptually challenge the boundaries of welfare states in Europe?” through a collection of four comparative political economy essays. I address long-standing debates on whether increasing migration leads to welfare state retrenchment or expansion and provide an in-depth, empirical analysis of the complex and nuanced relationship between immigration and welfare states in European countries. The findings from these four chapters offer important conclusions about the resilience of European welfare states in the face of increasing immigration. This chapter is structured as follows: first, by providing a summary of the four previous chapters, their main conclusions and how they are interlinked, followed by some policy considerations, and then by identifying some areas for further research. 6.1 Chapter Conclusions Chapter 2 sets out to present the broad trends and associations between immigration and welfare state generosity in Europe. It tests the relationship between stocks of immigrants, as measured by the proportion of the population that is foreign-born, and welfare state effort, as measured by social welfare spending as percentage of GDP and a welfare generosity index, a composite indicator developed by Scruggs et al. (2014). It contributes to the comparative political economy literature on welfare states and migration by expanding the definition of welfare state effort through including an index of generosity as a direct comparison to welfare state spending. The contrast between these two measures highlights a key challenge in welfare state research: expenditure alone does not always capture policy generosity (Scruggs, 2006) and fulfils the need to consider alternative dimensions of welfare policy by incorporating both social spending as a percentage of GDP and a welfare generosity index and thus providing a more nuanced view of welfare state effort. Through using pooled cross-sectional time-series analyses, the results indicate that immigration has a neutral to positive association with welfare state effort in Europe. Social welfare spending is positively and significantly associated with foreign-born and when social welfare spending is exchanged for a welfare generosity index then no statistically significant relationship 6 Conclusion
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