Welfare chauvinism in Europe: The opposition towards social benefits and services for migrants

On 31 May 2024, the European Studies Centre (ESC) hosted Gianna Eick, Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, to discuss her book Welfare Chauvinism in Europe: How Education, Economy and Culture Shape Public Attitudes. Her presentation was followed by a discussion between the author and William Allen, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and non-stipendiary research fellow at Nuffield Collegebook and an exchange between Allen and Eick on the main arguments of the research presented. The seminar was chaired by Tim Vlandas, Associate Professor of Comparative Social Policy at Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford.

Eick’s research on welfare chauvinism focuses in the interplay between the recipients of welfare state policies, the type of policies that the welfare state covers, and government policies, and the government level responsible for their administration and financing. Eick argued that from a historical perspective the welfare state has been growing particularly in Western states and democracies, but there is a rising opposition against. She uses ‘welfare policy opposition’ as an umbrella term covering different forms of protest against existing or future welfare policies provided by different governance levels and social partners.

Eick posited that welfare chauvinism is at the heart of current political conflicts. She defines welfare chauvinism as opposition to worker access or worker rights to migrants, refugees, and newcomers in general. The argument from welfare chauvinists is that foreigners come to their countries to benefit from what they see as being benefits for ‘us’ and not for ‘them’. Eick argued that European right-wing parties are capitalising on these sentiments. She discusses the public statements by the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) president who had claimed Ukrainian refugees want to come to Germany to take advantage of the benefits the country offers; the targeting of foreign-sounding names in the Dutch benefit fraud scandal; and the galvanisation of British voters by welfare chauvinism leading to voting for Brexit.

Dreaming of Europe: Work refugees and the migration crisis

On 28 May 2024, the European Studies Centre (ESC) hosted Randall Hansen, Canada Research Chair in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Global Migration Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School, to discuss his upcoming book Dreaming of Europe: Refugees and the Old Continent. Joining the panel to discuss Professor Hansen’s recent work was Catherine Briddick, Andrew W Mellon Associate Professor of International Human Rights and Refugee Law and a fellow of St Antony's College. Othon Anastasakis, ESC director, chaired the seminar.

Through this research project, Hansen sought to understand the migration crisis from the perspective of the refugees themselves. He had undertaken ethnographic research in multiple sites in Europe and Africa, and started his presentation by illustrating the issue at hand through three vignettes. Each of them told the painful story of the arduous and precarious journeys of refugees from Mali, Cameroon, and Nigeria respectively.

He then framed the narrative of the migration crisis and his latest research on the rise of far-right politics in Europe. He argued that because most people in Europe believe the European Union is bad for migration, it is important to ‘get it right’ – that is, it is important to dispel the migration myths and strive to clearly understand the migration problem and implement effective policies to address it.

Hansen first underscored that Europe and the rich countries of the Global North are not hosting the bulk of the world refugee population; 75 percent of the refugees are in the Global South. The EU, according to him, is doing a bit more than the other rich countries, but not much more. This lack of burden-sharing is particularly important since Hansen considered that the West – and Russia – bear the greatest responsibility for the wars that have forced people to become refugees.

The fall of dictatorship in Spain, Portugal and Greece: 50 years on

On 21 May, the European Studies Centre (ESC) together with Southeast European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX) held a panel discussion focusing on the fall of dictatorships in Spain, Portugal, and Greece and the implications of the transition period on contemporary political developments in each of the respective countries as well as in the broader European space.

Professor Joao Carlos Espada, co-founder of the Institute for Political Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal, Dr. Ainhoa Campos Posada, Universidad Complutense Madrid, and Harris Mylonas, Associate Professor at George Washington University, discussed these developments in Portugal, Spain, and Greece respectively. The seminar was chaired by ESC and SEESOX Director, Dr Othon Anastasakis.

Portugal, Spain, and Greece represent the first cases of democratisation within the European space after the Second World War and before the fall of Communism, and are thus central to democratisation theory. It was precisely on this theoretical approach that Joao Carlos Espada grounded his presentation. He considered the fall of the dictatorship in Portugal as part of the third wave of democratization, as outlined by Samuel Huntington. Espada drew consistently on Huntigton’s views on the third wave of democratisation.

He argued that the military coup that heralded the establishment of democracy in Portugal was followed by a strong confrontation between two radically different conceptions of democracy: on the one hand popular democracy, which was supported by the military, inspired by Communism, and on the other, parliamentary democracy. Although the communists were electorally defeated, they attempted a coup in November 1975 that was defeated by a coalition of left and center-right parties.