Over the last three decades, Europe's generous social benefits have encouraged a massive surge of 'welfare migration,' especially of low skilled laborers. At the same time, the US has attracted many highly skilled migrants, which in turn promotes internal innovation. Restrictions on the international mobility of labor are arguably the largest policy obstructions for the international economy today. A variety of studies suggest that even a small reduction in barriers to migration will result in the growth of significant global welfare benefits. Migration States and Welfare States focuses on a central tension faced by policy makers in countries that receive migrants from lower wage countries. Such countries are typically highly productive and rich in capital. These attributes, coupled with the host country's welfare system, attract low-skilled migrants, who find a generous welfare state particularly attractive, while deterring skilled migrants, who recognize that welfare states likely have higher redistributive taxes.

Over the last three decades, Europe's generous social benefits have encouraged a massive surge of 'welfare migration,' especially of low skilled laborers. At the same time, the US has attracted many highly skilled migrants, which in turn promotes internal innovation. Restrictions on the international mobility of labor are arguably the largest policy obstructions for the international economy today. A variety of studies suggest that even a small reduction in barriers to migration will result in the growth of significant global welfare benefits. Migration States and Welfare States focuses on a central tension faced by policy makers in countries that receive migrants from lower wage countries. Such countries are typically highly productive and rich in capital. These attributes, coupled with the host country's welfare system, attract low-skilled migrants, who find a generous welfare state particularly attractive, while deterring skilled migrants, who recognize that welfare states likely have higher redistributive taxes.

This book addresses the socioeconomic effects of immigration to Sweden. Historically, Sweden was a homogeneous country. In recent years, this has changed dramatically as Sweden has received more refugees per capita than any comparable country: this makes Sweden an interesting case study for analyzing the social and economic impact of refugee migration to European welfare states. The book highlights the long-term effects of low-skilled immigration to welfare states, while tying this to the broader European experience. Much of the public discussion of immigration in the West has focused on the American experience, which differs significantly from refugee migration to European welfare states. Research has shown that immigration is not a unitary phenomenon, and that its social and economic effects depend both on the type of migrants and on the receiving country. As demonstrated in the book, European welfare states have fairly similar outcomes with regard to refugee migration, but with differences in degree and the scale of migration. Their experience, however, contrasts with American outcomes as well as with high-skilled migration to Europe. This book is a translated, updated, and expanded version of the successful Swedish original entitled Massutmaning (2017). This book is translated by Jonas Vesterberg and edited by Pontus Tholin.

Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman once noted that free immigration cannot coexist with a welfare state. A welfare state with open borders might turn into a haven for poor immigrants, which would place such a fiscal burden on the state that native-born voters would support less-generous benefits or restricted immigration, or both. And yet a welfare state with an aging population might welcome young skilled immigrants. The preferences of the native-born population toward migration depend on the skill and age composition of the immigrants, and migration policies in a political-economy framework may be tailored accordingly. This book examines how social benefits-immigrations political economy conflicts are resolved, with an empirical application to data from Europe and the developed countries, integrating elements from population, international, public, and political economics into a unified static and dynamic framework. Using a static analytical framework to examine intra-generational distribution, the authors first focus on the skill composition of migrants in both free and restricted immigration policy regimes, drawing on empirical research from EU-15 and non-EU-15 states. The authors then offer theoretical analyses of similar issues in dynamic overlapping generations settings, studying not only intragenerational but also intergenerational aspects, including old-young dependency ratios and skilled-unskilled conflicts. Finally, they examine overall gains from or costs of migration in both host and source countries and the race to the bottom argument of tax competition between states in the presence of free migration.

The lore of the immigrant who comes to the United States to take advantage of our welfare system has a long history in America's collective mythology, but it has little basis in fact. The so-called problem of immigrants on the dole was nonetheless a major concern of the 1996 welfare reform law, the impact of which is still playing out today. While legal immigrants continue to pay taxes and are eligible for the draft, welfare reform has severely limited their access to government supports in times of crisis. Edited by Michael Fix, Immigrants and Welfare rigorously assesses the welfare reform law, questions whether its immigrant provisions were ever really necessary, and examines its impact on legal immigrants' ability to integrate into American society. Immigrants and Welfare draws on fields from demography and law to developmental psychology. The first part of the volume probes the politics behind the welfare reform law, its legal underpinnings, and what it may mean for integration policy. Contributor Ron Haskins makes a case for welfare reform's ultimate success but cautions that excluding noncitizen children (future workers) from benefits today will inevitably have serious repercussions for the American economy down the road. Michael Wishnie describes the implications of the law for equal protection of immigrants under the U.S. Constitution. The second part of the book focuses on empirical research regarding immigrants' propensity to use benefits before the law passed, and immigrants' use and hardship levels afterwards. Jennifer Van Hook and Frank Bean analyze immigrants' benefit use before the law was passed in order to address the contested sociological theories that immigrants are inclined to welfare use and that it slows their assimilation. Randy Capps, Michael Fix, and Everett Henderson track trends before and after welfare reform in legal immigrants' use of the major federal benefit programs affected by the law. Leighton Ku looks specifically at trends in food stamps and Medicaid use among noncitizen children and adults and documents the declining health insurance coverage of noncitizen parents and children. Finally, Ariel Kalil and Danielle Crosby use longitudinal data from Chicago to examine the health of children in immigrant families that left welfare. Even though few states took the federal government's invitation with the 1996 welfare reform law to completely freeze legal immigrants out of the social safety net, many of the law's most far-reaching provisions remain in place and have significant implications for immigrants. Immigrants and Welfare takes a balanced look at the politics and history of immigrant access to safety-net supports and the ongoing impacts of welfare. Copublished with the Migration Policy Institute

This third and last open access volume in the series takes the perspective of non-EU countries on immigrant social protection. By focusing on 12 of the largest sending countries to the EU, the book tackles the issue of the multiple areas of sending state intervention towards migrant populations. Two “mirroring” chapters are dedicated to each of the 12 non-EU states analysed (Argentina, China, Ecuador, India, Lebanon, Morocco, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey). One chapter focuses on access to social benefits across five core policy areas (health care, unemployment, old-age pensions, family benefits, guaranteed minimum resources) by discussing the social protection policies that non-EU countries offer to national residents, non-national residents, and non-resident nationals. The second chapter examines the role of key actors (consulates, diaspora institutions and home country ministries and agencies) through which non-EU sending countries respond to the needs of nationals abroad. The volume additionally includes two chapters focusing on the peculiar case of the United Kingdom after the Brexit referendum. Overall, this volume contributes to ongoing debates on migration and the welfare state in Europe by showing how non-EU sending states continue to play a role in third country nationals’ ability to deal with social risks. As such this book is a valuable read to researchers, policy makers, government employees and NGO’s.

Three Worlds of Relief examines the role of race and immigration in the development of the American social welfare system by comparing how blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants were treated by welfare policies during the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Taking readers from the turn of the twentieth century to the dark days of the Depression, Cybelle Fox finds that, despite rampant nativism, European immigrants received generous access to social welfare programs. The communities in which they lived invested heavily in relief. Social workers protected them from snooping immigration agents, and ensured that noncitizenship and illegal status did not prevent them from receiving the assistance they needed. But that same helping hand was not extended to Mexicans and blacks. Fox reveals, for example, how blacks were relegated to racist and degrading public assistance programs, while Mexicans who asked for assistance were deported with the help of the very social workers they turned to for aid. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Fox paints a riveting portrait of how race, labor, and politics combined to create three starkly different worlds of relief. She debunks the myth that white America's immigrant ancestors pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, unlike immigrants and minorities today. Three Worlds of Relief challenges us to reconsider not only the historical record but also the implications of our past on contemporary debates about race, immigration, and the American welfare state.