Conclusion 123 Chapter 5 seeks to test the micro-level foundations of the macro-level trends the previous chapters have uncovered through exploring how immigration is related to attitudes towards redistribution. I use multilevel ordered logit models to include both micro- and macro-level factors and two different measures for immigration (foreign-born as percentage of the population to test the effect of general level of immigration and Central and Eastern European labour mobility) and find somewhat varied results between these two different types of migration. I find a positive and significant relationship between general levels of immigration and support for redistribution, suggesting some evidence in favour of welfare state expansion over retrenchment. Previous research has found that a larger share of immigrants in a population can decrease perceived group threat, which is the feeling that an outgroup (such as immigrants) might threaten the ingroup’s own interests and thus reduce the likelihood that the ingroup would express a preference for social policies that either seek to exclude (i.e. welfare chauvinism) or retrench the welfare state as whole (Cappelen & Peters 2017). Indeed, when I test welfare chauvinism in the analysis, I find a negative association between foreign-born and the likelihood of expressing exclusionary social policy preferences. When the CEE labour mobility is tested in the analysis, there is no significant, direct effect on preferences for redistribution. However, when interacting CEE labour mobility with the unemployment rate, this reveals that CEE labour mobility is more complexly linked to preferences for redistribution. The initial effect of CEE labour mobility is positive, suggesting some evidence in favour of the compensation hypothesis, but at higher levels of unemployment and CEE labour mobility the average probability of agreeing with the concept that government should take steps to reduce inequality, all else remaining equal, is significantly reduced. This finding highlights how context conditions welfare attitudes. It may be that individuals in a more unstable economic environment with high immigration and high unemployment are more concerned about the financial burden on the welfare state. Some previous research suggests that when economic conditions worsen (e.g., rising unemployment), concerns about welfare sustainability or government spending more generally can increase, particularly if immigration is perceived as an additional strain on public spending (Burgoon & Rooduijn, 2021). Although, when I test the link between CEE labour mobility on perceptions of social benefits as a strain on the economy, I find no effect. Nevertheless, these findings continue to support the idea that broader economic conditions play a crucial role in shaping attitudes towards income redistribution (Alesina & Giuliano, 2011; Hacker et al., 2013; Hays et al., 2005; Jaime-Castillo & Sáez-Lozano, 2016; Pontusson & Rueda, 2010) and that immigration may only somewhat modify some of these already well-established relationships. Subsequently, after breaking down the
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