Intra-EU Labour Mobility and the Welfare State 71 if there is support for the development of a cross-border welfare rights. Using survey data from Sweden, they show that when a welfare recipient is mentioned as Bulgarian (an EU13 member state) vs Dutch (an EU15 member state), an individual’s opposition to cross-border welfare rights increases by 6 percentage points. Similarly, Hellwig and Sinno (2017) argue that the public have group-specific concerns and associate different types of migrants with different types of threats. Using survey data from the United Kingdom (UK), they find that Muslim immigrants are more likely to trigger concerns regarding cultural change and security, while Eastern Europeans are more likely to prompt economic and crime related concerns. Jørgensen and Thomsen (2016) argue that “immigrant groups are positioned differently according to their status and perceived value for society” (p. 332) and as such we expect that the nationality of a welfare recipient could play a role in shaping public support for the welfare state and ultimately alter its previous levels of generosity by, for example, seeking to ring-fence benefits from certain groups (welfare chauvinism) or even overall retrenchment if this is not possible. However, EU labour migrants’ right to equal treatment and non-discrimination in their host country is protected under EU law – Directive 2004/38/EC6 – which enables EU mobile citizens access to the same social advantages as natives (Blauberger & Schmidt, 2014; European Commission, 2018a)7. In a macro-level analysis of the association between immigration and welfare state effort, the estimated association is ultimately a net effect of the positive and negative mechanisms which might play a role. To recall, a negative impact from immigration on welfare state effort can be expected because of concerns about fiscal pressure on the welfare state or because of reduced solidarity between groups or individuals. At the same time, a positive impact may be expected because higher job insecurity stemming from increased labour market competition results in a higher demand for compensation via welfare state programmes. For two reasons, we expect that the net effect of intra-EU labour mobility we will be more positive when compared to the net effect for immigration in general. First, because labour migration increases labour market competition more directly than migration in general, the demand for compensation through increased welfare state effort will be larger in the case of labour migration. In addition to the increase in regular labour market competition, intra-EU labour mobility could also create issues such as social dumping, i.e. when employers undermine collective agreements made with the native labour force by exploiting foreign labourers who are often willing to work longer hours for 6 Also known as ‘The Citizens’ Rights Directive’. 7 However, certain caveats and ambiguous concepts provide room for interpretation and member states aim to minimise the domestic impact of the law – for example, by increasing the burden of proof for EU citizens’ rights to reside and access social protection (Blauberger & Schmidt, 2014).
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