(2024):
The ethnic penalty in welfare deservingness: A factorial survey experiment on welfare chauvinism in pension attitudes in Germany.
Journal of European Social Policy, 34, issue 2, pp. 190-202.
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Integration of Migrants and Attitudes Towards the Welfare State
Research question/goal:
Against the background of the strong immigration to Germany, the role of the welfare state and its legitimacy have been the subject of heated debates over the last years. On the one hand, social policy helps integrate migrants into the labour market and the society and thus contributes to the stabilization of the social security systems. On the other hand, migration can undermine the legitimacy of the welfare state if the local population is hostile towards a redistribution in favour of migrants and worried about a higher financial burden due to the costs of immigration.
The research group therefore aims to analyse the following questions: (1) How do social policy and new immigration waves shape the integration of migrants who have already arrived? (2) How does the perceived integration of migrants change the attitudes towards the welfare state? (3) How do the perceived and the actual integration interact in different social policy areas. The project goes beyond existing research by differentiating between different groups of migrants and local people and by considering multiple dimensions of integration. We combine the analysis of representative micro data sets with experimental survey designs. Based on these results, we aim to develop scientifically sound and practicable recommendations for a sustainable social policy in Germany that is able to provide security for communities in need of protection and to offer new opportunities without jeopardising its own acceptance.
The multidisciplinary project at the interface of economics, sociology and political science brings together the competences of different scientific institutions located in Mannheim, with a close cooperation of the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). The junior research group also includes ZEW researchers Martin Lange, Paul Berbée and Katia Gallegos Torres. The research group is accompanied and supported by a scientific advisory board of national and international experts.
Current stage:
After more than five years of funding, the FIS-BMAS junior research group is coming to an end on 31 January 31 2025. Several papers using factorial survey experiments to examine welfare chauvinist attitudes have been published or are currently under review. Our latest publication in the Journal for European Social Policy investigates whether pensioners with a foreign ethnic background are perceived as less deserving to receive a pension than native pensioners. Our results show that welfare chauvinist attitudes are prevalent in the German population: in the experiment, native respondents granted lower pensions to pensioners with perceived migration background than to other pensioners, even if both had the same income, contribution years, and number of children. In two other papers, we use similar experimental designs and show that such discriminatory attitudes are also found in the perception of fair wages, social assistance, unemployment benefits and sanctions on the unemployed.
In a paper based on IMES data, we examine misperceptions among natives regarding the number and integration of migrants. We show that these misperceptions vary depending on the context. The perceptions are more accurate at the local level and influenced by migrants' country of origin, which emphasises the need for context-specific approaches in understanding and addressing these misperceptions. The project organised a final workshop (October 24–25, 2024), which covered a wide range of topics, including migration and political polarisation, cultural and legal integration, refugee dynamics, labour market discrimination, and societal attitudes. Featuring five thematic sessions, two keynote lectures, and one poster session, it brought together interdisciplinary researchers to explore the multifaceted impact of migration on society, policy, and integration outcomes.
Fact sheet
Funding:
BMAS Fördernetzwerk FIS
Duration:
2019 to 2025
Status:
ongoing
Data Sources:
Secondary data analysis and own survey
Geographic Space:
Germany
Publications
Journal Articles
Khalil, Samir, and Elias Naumann
(2022):
Does Contact with Foreigners Reduce Worries about Immigration? A Longitudinal Analysis in Germany.
European Sociological Review, 38, issue 2, pp. 189–201.
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Book Chapters
Naumann, Elias, and Moritz Hess
(2021):
Population Ageing, Immigration and the Welfare State: The Political Demography in Western Europe.
Pp. 351-371 in:
Achim Goerres, Pieter Vanhuysse
(Eds.)
Global Political Demography: The Politics of Population Change.
Cham:
Palgrave Macmillan.
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Other Publications
Brinkmann, Marvin Marcus, Katja Möhring and Elias Naumann
(2020):
Sollten Migranten das gleiche Anrecht auf Sozialleistungen haben wie Deutsche? Einstellungen der Bevölkerung in Deutschland.
Berlin
[FIS-Briefing; 14]
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Conference Presentations
Naumann, Elias, and Samir Khalil
(2020):
Does Contact with Migrants Reduce Worries about Immigration? A Longitudinal Analysis of Public Attitudes towards Migration in Germany.
[Visiting Scholars Seminar at Harvard University: New Research on Europe, (virtual), April 03rd, 2020]
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Brinkmann, Marvin Marcus, and Elias Naumann
(2020):
Explaining Support for Welfare Chauvinism – How Immigrants’ Status and Citizenship Affect Natives’ Preferences to Exclude Immigrants from Access to Social Assistance and Unemployment Benefits.
[18th Annual ESPAnet Conference, (virtual conference), September 02nd to September 04th, 2020]
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Naumann, Elias, and Marvin Marcus Brinkmann
(2020):
Explaining support for welfare chauvinism: how immigrants’ status and citizenship affect natives’ preference to exclude immigrants from access to social assistance and unemployment benefits.
[ECPR General Conference, (virtual conference), August 24th to August 28th, 2020]
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