 Government compensation and citizen support for immigration opennessDavid H. Bearce and Brendan J. Connell Economics and Politics, 2023, vol. 35, issue 1, 5-27 Abstract: This paper explores how government compensation programs like unemployment insurance and worker training may influence citizen attitudes about immigration openness. It considers several different arguments, including the proposition that social welfare programs may induce less‐educated citizens to feel more negatively about their class identity, thus pushing them toward an exclusionary national identity with greater opposition to immigration openness. Using data from the International Social Survey Program's 2013 National Identity module with more than 20,000 respondents from 24 developed democracies, it reports that greater government compensation can be associated with less supportive attitudes for the least educated with a diminishing negative effect for more educated citizens. Consistent with an identity shift argument for why less‐educated citizens might become more hostile toward immigration openness with greater government compensation, it also reports that greater compensation is associated with a more exclusionary national identity for less‐educated citizens. Date: 2023 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ecopol:v:35:y:2023:i:1:p:5-27 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Economics and Politics is currently edited by Peter Rosendorff More articles in Economics and Politics from Wiley Blackwell |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.