Introduction: Managing migration, managing welfare

Migration has re-emerged as a highly politicized, divisive, and contested issue in European politics over the past twenty-five years or so. Much of the public debate has focused on the economic ramifications of migration and a commonly rehearsed claim underlying calls for restrictive policy concerns: the “drain” on welfare systems that migrants constitute. The phenomenon of “welfare state chauvinism” is by no means unique to its Scandinavian origins, and throughout Europe populist xenophobes portray migrants as welfare scroungers. More sophisticated opponents of liberal migration point to the difficulties in labor market integration experienced by the second and third generation of Europe's ethnic minorities. Meanwhile, pragmatic policy-makers regard migration as one possible tool in redressing Europe's demographic deficit, the shifting age pyramid and the looming pension shortfalls. Despite the burgeoning literature on migration to Europe (Guiraudon and Joppke 2001; Geddes 2003; Lahav 2004), few scholarly efforts link discussions of the future of European welfare systems with immigration (for an exception see Bommes and Geddes 2000).

This chapter addresses this gap in the literature by focusing on the following key question: how do the four main types of European welfare state regimes – liberal, Bismarckian, Scandinavian, Mediterranean – interact and cope with migration? In pursuing this line of inquiry and focusing on the mechanisms of inclusion (or lack thereof) by various welfare regimes in Europe, I explore both how migration affects these various welfare regimes and conversely how they affect migrants.