66 Chapter 4 The increase in intra-EU labour mobility, in particular from Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, might be seen as one of the most substantial structural changes in European welfare states in the past 20 years, but to the best of our knowledge, the association between intra-EU labour migration and welfare state effort has not yet been analysed. The current evidence on the association between migration and welfare state efforts is rather mixed (Fenwick, 2019; Gaston & Rajaguru, 2013; Lipsmeyer & Zhu, 2011; Römer, 2023; Soroka et al., 2016; Taschwer, 2021) and this paper seeks to contribute theoretically and empirically to this comparative political economy literature on migration and welfare states. We do so by building on evidence from Fenwick (2019) through narrowing the scope of this article to focus on intra-EU labour mobility and by disaggregating welfare state effort further. Specifically, we distinguish between Western European labour mobility3 and Central and Eastern European (CEE) labour mobility4, two previously unmeasured categories of movement, in order to ask: do these two groups of labour migrants5 have differing effects on welfare state effort? In addition, welfare state spending is disaggregated into five component parts (old age, incapacity, family, active labour market policies, and unemployment spending) and complemented with two replacement rates (unemployment and social assistance). Our findings indicate that the type of movement is important for better understanding how immigration and mobility shape the boundaries of the welfare state. In particular, we find evidence in support of a compensatory effect in light of increasing mobility across the EU. The rest of this paper is organised as follows. In the next section, we review the relevant literature and draw hypotheses regarding the effect of the two types of labour migration on the welfare state to test in the analysis. The third section presents our data and methodology for the empirical analysis, which is then followed by a discussion of the results. The final section concludes and reflects upon the implications of our findings. 3 For simplicity, we use the term Western European to refer to the original EU-15 member states plus European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries. 4 For simplicity, we use the term Central and Eastern European to refer to the member states incorporated in the three successive enlargements of the EU (2004, 2007, and 2008). 5 We use the terms labour migration and labour mobility interchangeably in this article, as those moving internally within the EU can be both a mobile citizen as recognised by the EU and a migrant as recognised by their host nations.
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