Framing Immigrants As Seekers of Social Benefits: A Comparative Examination of the Impact of Economic Hardship on Public Attitudes Towards Immigrants

Background and Purpose

Whether immigrants should be entitled to welfare benefits is a matter of ongoing discussion among policy-makers and the general public of Western societies. Substantial research has addressed the role of national-level factors (e.g., employment) and individual-level factors (e.g., prejudices) on shaping policies and attitudes towards immigrants’ social rights. Recent studies have suggested that the Great Recession of the late 2000s fostered hostility against immigrants, who were increasingly branded as “jobs-takers” and as a burden for the welfare-state. The current study examined whether framing immigrants as social benefits seekers is related to the perception that one’s family financial situation was greatly affected by the Great Recession.

Methods

We used data from the Transatlantic Trends 2014, a multinational cross-sectional survey of general public attitudes about domestic and foreign policy issues. Interviews (N=13,510) were conducted in ten European nations, as well as Russia, Turkey, and the US. We selected respondents in three different geopolitical contexts, namely Southern Europe (i.e., Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain), the cluster France-Germany-UK, and the US. Framing immigrants as social benefit seekers was measured using a survey item inquiring about the most common reason for immigrants to come. Being greatly affected by the Great Recession was measured upon a question on whether the respondent’ family was personally affected by the economic downturn. A series of ordinal logistic regressions were estimated, controlling for occupation, ideology, migratory background, estimation of the number of immigrants, household composition, race-ethnicity, age, and gender.

Results

This study found that framing immigrants as social benefits seekers is related to economic hardship. For the US respondents, those who reported that one´s family financial situation was greatly affected by the Great Recession had odds of framing immigrants as social benefits seekers that were about 2.69 times the odds for those who reported not having greatly affected by the crisis (p<.05). A similar pattern was found among respondents from the France-Germany-UK cluster (OR=2.21, p<.01). Significantly, our findings showed the opposite effect among Southern European respondents, to whom being greatly affected by the Great Recession at the family-level decreased the odds of framing immigrants as seekers of social benefits (OR=0.58, p<.01).

Conclusions and Implications

This study developed a comparative-transnational approach which aligns with a well-established tradition of social work scholarship concerning the processes of stigmatization of diverse populations. Our findings confirmed the conclusions drawn from previous researches, in particular, that family economic hardship is associated with attitudes towards immigrants. The main contribution of this work is to demonstrate that a different pattern of association operates among different geopolitical contexts, which underlines the need for further examination of factors explaining such regional divergences. In particular, it would be worthwhile to analyze how different family structures or migratory backgrounds may moderate the effect of economic hardship on anti-immigrant attitudes among the general public of Western societies.