Immigration and Welfare State Retrenchment: Why the US Experience is not Reflected in Western Europe

Is large-scale immigration to Europe incompatible with the continent’s generous and encompassing welfare states? This question is at the heart of both politics and academia - and the predominant answer given to it is pessimistic. Pointing to the experiences of the US, where a multi-racial society in combination with a longstanding history of immigration encounters very limited welfare provision, many Europeans fear that the continent’s new immigrant-based heterogeneity may push it toward more American levels of redistribution. But are the conflictual US experiences really resembled in the European context? Immigration and Welfare State Retrenchment addresses this question by analysing the role race and immigration play for welfare reforms in the US and Europe. Whereas the combination of racial patterns and party politics has serious consequences for the US welfare system, the general message of the book is that these conflicts are not resembled in the Western European context.