Introduction 5 more “undeserving” of welfare support in comparison with the elderly, sick and disabled people, and the unemployed, also known as the immigrant deservingness penalty, (Bonoli et al., 2024; Ford, 2015; van Oorschot, 2008) or because they may consider migrants over-represented in their receipt of benefits, thus placing too much pressure on public services and questioning the sustainability of the welfare state (Magni, 2021). Again, the evidence base for these explanatory theories is mixed, likely because of the differences in the data used, the time periods and countries under study, and the methods utilised. Moreover, these relationships are typically moderated by national contexts such as levels of immigration and economic stability or institutional structures such as welfare regime or programme type (Burgoon & Rooduijn, 2021; Eick & Larsen, 2022; Mau & Burkhardt, 2009), as well as individual level contexts such as economic and cultural insecurity, as individuals respond to the circumstances in which they find themselves (Hays et al., 2005). It is the detail in which these preferences are shaped and how social policy may be affected in these varied contexts, which provides the many avenues for research to explore and understand. Nonetheless, despite the expanding body of literature, several important gaps remain theoretically, empirically, and methodologically that this dissertation aims to fill. With regards to theory, this dissertation is embedded not only within the literature on migration and the welfare state, but it also fits within the broader literature on globalisation. First, I question the persistent assumption that free immigration always spells bad news for generous welfare states (e.g. Freeman, 1986; Friedman, 1999; Alesina et al., 2001) and provide the alternative perspective that under certain circumstances, this does not seem to hold true. Instead, I hypothesise that dependent on the type of social welfare programme or type of mobility under study, we can expect to find the opposite effect and that immigration and free movement of labour in the EU could be positively associated with welfare state generosity. Second, much of the research mentioned above predominantly relies on aggregate social spending as the primary measure of welfare state generosity. Welfare spending (typically measured as a percentage of GDP) alone cannot adequately capture aspects such as benefit access, benefit conditionality, benefit adequacy. It is sensitive to demographic factors such as an aging population or rising unemployment and may also simply fluctuate based on changes to the denominator (rising or shrinking GDP) rather than changes in spending. However, it provides excellent cross-national comparability over time as it is well-recorded, widely available and regularly updated. As such, it provides an excellent indicator for both overall fiscal effect and disaggregated across multiple policy domains. To account for this so-called ‘dependent variable problem’, this dissertation incorporates alter-
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