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Lecture

Does the welfare entitlement of immigrants change the admission preferences of natives?

Date
Friday 21 April 2023
Time
Address
Wijnhaven
Turfmarkt 99
2511 DP The Hague
Room
3.54

The Social Citizenship and Migration research program would like to invite you to a seminar given by Alexandre Afonso.

Abstract

In this seminar, Alexandre will present a design for a survey experiment, which will be fielded in the coming months. Its objective is to investigate whether different provisions of welfare entitlement for immigrants have an impact on the preferences of citizens in receiving countries regarding admission policy. Some authors have argued that one way to ease the concerns of natives regarding immigration, and therefore make them more open to larger migration flows, is to limit the potential fiscal cost of immigrants, notably through restrictions on welfare entitlement. This project tests the microfoundations of this idea in a conjoint survey experiment in four countries, assessing whether lower levels of entitlement make immigrants more “acceptable” to natives, looking at the mediating role of skills. The survey also assesses whether greater integration requirements (e.g compulsory language courses) make immigrants more “acceptable”.

About the speaker

Alexandre Afonso is an associate professor of public policy at the Department of Public Administration at Leiden University. His area of specialization is comparative political economy, and his recent research focusses on the interactions between immigration, labour markets and welfare states in comparative and historical perspective.

About the program

The Social Citizenship and Migration program is one of the multidisciplinary stimulation programs at Leiden University. In the SC&M program, Leiden experts in public administration, law, economics, humanities and social and behavioural sciences look together at the issue of migration. They combine their knowledge of migration in the past, social patterns and perceptions of migrants, and share their findings with other researchers, policymakers and society at large. Find more information here.

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