PhD defence
The Political Economy of Welfare State Reform: a collection of essays on human mobility and social protection
- C.E. Fenwick
- Date
- Wednesday 12 November 2025
- Time
- Address
-
Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden
Supervisor(s)
Summary
In many advanced economies, immigration has become a defining characteristic of open, interconnected, and interdependent economies. Nowhere is this more evident than in the European Union (EU), where the process of widening and deepening integration has established a distinctive framework for fostering intra-European mobility. This dissertation examines how increasing immigration structurally and conceptually challenges the boundaries of European welfare states.
Using insights from political economy and social psychology, and through the creation of new indicators for intra-EU labour mobility, the dissertation analyses how different forms of immigration affect both public support for redistribution at the micro-level and welfare state effort at the macro-level. The findings show that increased immigration does not systematically erode generosity; in some cases, it is associated with increased welfare state effort, suggesting welfare state resilience.
The dissertation calls for more nuanced data, greater disaggregation of immigration, and attention to political and economic mediators such as job insecurity, unemployment, and social program design. It contests the assumption that immigration inevitably leads to welfare state retrenchment, showing instead that welfare state responses may vary depending on the type of migration, economic context, and public attitudes.
PhD dissertations
Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.
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