Introduction 3 Alongside these key public debates, the globalisation of movement and its relationship with the welfare state has also become a central focus of academic debate. While, increasing openness for flows of trade and capital on the transformation of the boundaries of the welfare state has been an important theme within the literature on the evolution of the welfare state, it has not been until more recently that the study of globalisation has started to incorporate increasingly open borders and how migration shapes the way the welfare state is organised. In 1986, Freeman published the article ‘Migration and the Political Economy of the Welfare State’, one of the earliest contributions to this particular stream of literature. He opens the debate by arguing that increasing inflows of labour fundamentally challenge the viability of the welfare state. Freeman presents the idea that as labour mobility and globalisation are in general open systems, while the welfare state must be a closed system in order to survive, that ultimately, the free movement of labour and the welfare state cannot coexist. Later, Alesina et al. ’s (2001) influential article ‘Why Doesn’t the United States Have a European-Style Welfare State?’ and Alesina and Glaeser’s (2004) follow-up article present evidence to support Freeman’s argument and provide the foundations for much of the subsequent research on this topic. Both articles aim to explain the lack of a developed welfare state in the United States (US) and show that the high ethnic fractionalisation of the population in the US is a crucial factor limiting the development of a welfare state. They determine that European nations were able to develop mature welfare states thanks to the relatively homogenous nature of their populations and the shared solidarity between peoples of a similar race, language, and culture. Based on their findings, they reason that an increase in the movement of people or an increase in the ethnic diversity of European nations will ultimately diminish the generosity of European welfare states. However, despite this argument, the empirical evidence is not rooted in an analysis of European data on European welfare systems and immigration regimes. As such, the overarching research question that this dissertation seeks to answer is: to what extent does immigration structurally and conceptually challenge the boundaries of welfare states in Europe? To answer this question, this dissertation draws on a wide range of theory and empirical evidence that comes before it. There are a number of competing theories that endeavour to explain how immigration, and/or globalisation more broadly, may affect national welfare states in Europe. At the macro-level, the efficiency hypothesis and ‘Embedded Liberalism’ are two central but opposing theories. The former argues that increasing globalisation will force governments to retrench social protection schemes in order to keep taxes low, stay globally competitive, and reduce the fiscal burden of migrants (Gaston & Rajaguru, 2013). The latter argues that governments in open economies must expand the welfare state in order to insure citizens against the risks posed by globalisation if they wish to ensure continued support for policies of openness (Ruggie, 1982). While Ruggie’s theory of
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