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Immigration, Multiculturalism, and the Welfare State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Will Kymlicka  and
Keith Banting
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Abstract

Popular opposition to immigration is rooted in many factors. In this essay, we focus on one specific issue that has become prominent in recent debates—namely, the fear that the welfare state is being undermined by the impact of increasing ethnic and racial diversity. There are actually two concerns here: first, that ethnic and racial diversity as such makes it more difficult to sustain redistributive social policies because it is difficult to generate feelings of national solidarity and trust across ethnic and racial lines, and second, that the “multiculturalism” policies adopted to recognize or accommodate immigrant groups tend to further undermine national solidarity and trust. If either of these hypotheses were true, the very idea of a “multicultural welfare state,” a welfare state that respects and accommodates diversity, would be almost a contradiction in terms. We review the existing evidence and suggest that both hypotheses are overstated. The evidence to date suggests that there is no inherent tendency for either immigrant ethnic diversity or multiculturalism policies to erode the welfare state. We conclude with some speculation about the implications of this evidence for debates about the rights of noncitizens.

Type
Special Section on Citizenship and Equality
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 281 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2006

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References

1 There are various ways of defining and measuring the impact of immigration on ethnic and racial diversity. Some studies focus on the percentage of the population that is foreign-born; others focus on the percentage of people whose mother tongue is a foreign language; others focus on phenotypic differences (the percentage of “visible minorities” or “racial minorities”). There is no single term that fully captures this range of possible understandings and definitions of diversity. For the rest of this essay, we will use “ethnic diversity” or “ethnic heterogeneity” as an umbrella term, but this should be understood as shorthand for “ethnic, linguistic, and racial diversity.” We will discuss the use of more specific indicators for measuring ethnic diversity below.

2 In our discussion, the “welfare state” and the related concepts of “social programs” and “social spending” are all taken to encompass health care, income security programs, and social services, but not education. In this, we follow the conventional approach adopted by the OECD in its compilation of data on what it calls public social expenditures.

3 For a discussion of these forces, including the postwar human rights revolution, the desecuritization of state-minority relations, and democratization, see Will Kymlicka, “Culturally Responsive Policies” (background paper prepared for the 2004 United Nations Human Development Report, June 15, 2004); available at hdr.undp.org/docs/publications/background_papers/2004/HDR2004_Will_Kymlicka.pdf.

4 See David Goodhart, “Too Diverse?” Prospect 95 (February 2004), pp. 30–37; and Nick Pearce, “Diversity versus Solidarity: A New Progressive Dilemma,” Renewal: A Journal of Labour Politics 12, no. 3 (2004).

5 For an overview of the debates within European social democratic parties on these issues, see René Cuperus, Karl Duffek, and Johannes Kandel, eds., The Challenge of Diversity: European Social Democracy Facing Migration, Integration and Multiculturalism (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2003).

6 For a discussion of the history of this argument, see Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000).

7 See William Easterly and Ross Levine, “Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112 (1997), pp. 1203–50; William Easterly, “Can Institutions Resolve Ethnic Conflict?” Economic Development and Cultural Change 49, no. 4 (2001), pp. 687–706; William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001); Daniel Nettle, “Linguistic Fragmentation and the Wealth of Nations,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 49 (2000), pp. 335–48; and Quentin Grafton, Stephen Knowles, and Dorian Owen, “Social Divergence and Productivity: Making a Connection,” in Andrew Sharpe, France St-Hilaire, and Keith Banting, eds., The Review of Economic Performance and Social Progress: Towards a Social Understanding of Productivity (Montreal: Institute for Research in Public Policy, 2002).

8 Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Rodney Hero, Faces of Inequality: Social Diversity in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Rodney Hero and Caroline Tolbert, “A Racial/Ethnic Diversity Interpretation of Politics and Policy in the States of the U.S.,” American Journal of Political Science 40 (1996), pp. 851–71; Rodney Hero and Rob Preuhs, “Multiculturalism and Welfare Policies in the US States: A State-level Comparative Analysis,” in Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, eds., Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Martin Johnson, “The Impact of Social Diversity and Racial Attitudes on Social Welfare Policy,” State Politics and Policy Quarterly 1, no. 1 (2001), pp. 27–49; Joe Soss, Sanford Schram, and Richard Fording, eds., Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2003); Martin Johnson, “Racial Context, Public Attitudes, and Welfare Effort in the American States,” in Soss, Schram, and Fording, eds., Race and Politics, pp. 151–70; Joe Soss, Sanford Schram, Thomas Vartanian, and Erin O'Brien, “Setting the Terms of Relief: Explaining State Policy Choices in the Devolution Revolution,” American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 2 (2001), pp. 378–95; Matthew C. Fellowes and Gretchen Rowe, “Politics and the New American Welfare State,” American Journal of Political Science 48 (April 2004), pp. 362–73; and Erzo Luttmer, “Group Loyalty and the Taste for Redistribution,” Journal of Political Economy 109, no. 3 (2001), pp. 500–28.

9 Alesina and Glaeser, Fighting Poverty.

10 It is important here to distinguish episodic “humanitarian” charity in response to disasters from ongoing institutionally compelled redistribution. The debate concerns resistance to the latter.

11 Frank Kemp Salter, ed., Welfare, Ethnicity, and Altruism: New Findings and Evolutionary Theory (London: Frank Cass, 2004).

12 Robert Putnam, “Who Bonds? Who Bridges? Findings from the Social Capital Benchmark Survey” (presentation to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 2004).

13 Herbert Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1995).

14 Gary Freeman, “Migration and the Political Economy of the Welfare State,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 485 (1986), p. 62.

15 Nathan Glazer, “The American Welfare State: Exceptional No Longer?” in Henry Cavanna, ed., Challenges to the Welfare State: Internal and External Dynamics for Change (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1998); and Goodhart, “Too Diverse?”

16 Alesina and Glaeser, Fighting Poverty, pp. 180–81.

17 We should also be cautious about the data used in these studies to measure correlations of heterogeneity and redistribution. For example, the classification of ethnic groups in the Index of Ethno-linguistic Fractionalization used in the Alesina and Glaeser study is not consistent, but varies significantly across countries. For example, the U.K. data reflect racial differences: e.g., White 93.7 percent; Indian 1.8 percent; Black 1.4 percent. In Canada, however, the data represent an amalgam of linguistic and national origins: e.g., French 22.8 percent; Other Canadian 43.5 percent; British 20.8 percent; German 3.4 percent.

18 In identifying these complaints, we have drawn in particular on the writings of a set of critics whose works have become widely cited in the literature. See Brian Barry, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001); Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1995); Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); Richard Rorty, “Is ‘Cultural Recognition’ a Useful Concept for Leftist Politics?” Critical Horizons 1 (2000), pp. 7–20; Alan Wolfe and Jyette Klausen, “Identity Politics and the Welfare State,” Social Philosophy and Policy 14, no. 2 (1997), pp. 213–55; and Alan Wolfe and Jyette Klausen, “Other Peoples,” Prospect, December 2000, pp. 28–33. When referring to “the critics,” we have these authors in mind, as well as the many commentators who have endorsed their arguments. For a detailed discussion of these three effects, see Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, “Do Multiculturalism Policies Erode the Welfare State?” in Philippe van Parijs, ed., Cultural Diversity versus Economic Solidarity (Brussels: Editions De Boeck Université, 2004), pp. 227–84.

19 There are other accounts in the literature. Nancy Fraser, for example, suggests that recognition and redistribution conflict because the latter is “de-differentiating” (i.e., aims at reducing differences between groups, by creating greater similarity in life conditions), whereas the former is “differentiating” (i.e., affirms group boundaries). See Nancy Fraser, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition and Participation,” in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 19 (1998), pp. 1–67; and Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition,” New Left Review, (May 2000), pp. 107–120. But it's not clear why reducing differences in economic circumstances should conflict with recognition of differences in cultural identities. If we ask why the former conflicts with the latter, Fraser's answer would probably end up invoking one or more of the three mechanisms we have listed above.

20 Anne Phillips, Which Equalities Matter? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999).

21 For versions of these responses, see Richard Caputo, “Multiculturalism and Social Justice in the United States: An Attempt to Reconcile the Irreconcilable within a Pragmatic Liberal Framework,” Race, Gender and Class 7, no. 4 (2001), pp. 161–82; James Tully, “Struggles over Recognition and Distribution,” Constellations 7 (2000); Bhikhu Parekh, “Redistribution or Recognition? A Misguided Debate,” in Stephen May, Tariq Modood, and Judith Squires, eds., Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Minority Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 199–213; and Christopher Zurn, “Group Balkanization or Societal Homogenization: Is There a Dilemma between Recognition and Distribution Struggles?” Public Affairs Quarterly 18, no. 2 (2004), pp. 159–86. As with the critiques of MCPs, these responses are entirely speculative. For a case study of how the struggle for MCPs has reinvigorated left-wing struggles for redistribution, see Donna Lee Van Cott, “Multiculturalism versus Neoliberalism in Latin America,” in Banting and Kymlicka, eds., Multiculturalism and the Welfare State.

22 Stuart Soroka, Keith Banting, and Richard Johnston, “Immigration and Redistribution in the Global Era,” in Pranab Bardham, Samuel Bowles, and Michael Wallerstein, eds., Globalization and Egalitarian Redistribution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).

23 In particular, the models developed in Duane Swank, Global Capital, Political Institutions, and Policy Change in Developed Welfare States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Evelyne Huber and John Stephens, Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

24 See Keith Banting, Richard Johnston, Will Kymlicka, and Stuart Soroka, “Do Multiculturalism Policies Erode the Welfare State? An Empirical Analysis,” in Banting and Kymlicka, eds., Multiculturalism and the Welfare State. This more recent study also examined the impact of two other (nonimmigrant) forms of ethno-racial diversity: namely, indigenous peoples (e.g., American Indians, Maori, Sami) and national minorities (e.g., Scots, Catalans, Flemish, Quebecois). Here again, in both cases, there is no correlation between the size of the minority and change in welfare spending over the past thirty years. Countries with larger indigenous populations or national minorities had no more difficulty sustaining their welfare spending than countries with smaller such groups.

25 See Peter Taylor-Gooby, “Is the Future American? Or, Can Left Politics Preserve European Welfare States from Erosion through Growing ‘Racial’ Diversity?” Journal of Social Policy 34, no. 4 (2005).

26 See Markus Crepaz, “‘If You Are My Brother, I May Give You a Dime!’ Public Opinion on Multiculturalism, Trust and the Welfare State,” in Banting and Kymlicka, eds., Multiculturalism and the Welfare State; and Markus Crepaz, Trust Without Borders: Immigration, the Welfare State and Identity in Modern Societies (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming).

27 More recently, this conclusion has been tested in multivariate analysis, with the same result. See Banting, Johnston, Kymlicka, and Soroka, “Do Multiculturalism Policies Erode the Welfare State?”

28 Banting and Kymlicka, “Do Multiculturalism Policies Erode the Welfare State?”

29 See van Parijs, ed., Cultural Diversity.

30 Crepaz, “‘If You Are My Brother, I May Give You a Dime!’” in Banting and Kymlicka, eds., Multiculturalism and the Welfare State.

31 For some preliminary exploration of this topic, see the case studies in Banting and Kymlicka, eds., Multiculturalism and the Welfare State.

32 Barry, Culture and Equality, p. 8.

33 See Yasemin Soysal, The Limits of Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

34 Versions of this argument have been articulated in recent works by David Miller (Citizenship and National Identity [Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000]), John Rawls (The Law of Peoples [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999]), and Thomas Nagel (“The Problem of Global Justice”, Philosophy & Public Affairs 33, no. 2 [2005], pp. 113–47), to name a few.

35 Of course, whether MCPs actually achieve this intended goal is another question. We can imagine scenarios in which the adoption of MCPs would backfire, and reinforce the perception of minority groups as “needy,”“undeserving,”“ungrateful,” and “dependent.” Some critics seem to assume that such unintended re-stigmatizing effects are inevitable. See Fraser, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics.” But the evidence mentioned in the previous section suggests that MCPs have not systematically had this effect.

36 See David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), and Citizenship and National Identity.

37 Will Kymlicka, “Being Canadian,” Government and Opposition 38, no. 3 (2003), pp. 357–85.

38 There was a strong backlash in Canada when an Aboriginal leader (Matthew Coon-Come) asserted defiantly that he “wasn't a Canadian,” yet nonetheless expected recognition of various rights from the Canadian state. The same sort of resentment arises when anglophone Canadians are asked to make accommodations by Quebecois nationalists who, it is widely believed, do not really want to be part of the country.

39 This capacity for multiculturalism to be captured by the nation-state, and to be deployed as a tool of nation building, has been bemoaned by some postmodernist critics. On their view, the emancipatory potential for multiculturalism depended precisely on the possibility that it would not be contained with national narratives or nationalist ideologies, and that it would push us toward a new postnational order that abandoned any oppressive fantasies of national cohesion. Instead, multiculturalism has been used to buttress and relegitimize the nation-state, and invoked as a tool for “normalizing” and “disciplining” minorities as “national citizens.” See Richard Day, Multiculturalism and the History of Canadian Diversity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). This postmodernist critique of multiculturalism stands in stark contrast with the social-democratic critique represented by Miller and Barry. The social-democratic left criticizes MCPs for eroding national solidarity; the postmodernist left criticizes MCPs for presupposing and relegitimating nationhood. From our perspective, postmodernists are right that multiculturalism has often become a tool of nation building, and a tool for normalizing immigrants as national citizens. We would argue, however, that this is legitimate and indeed desirable, so long as (a) the conception of national citizenship respects the legitimate minority and cultural rights of all groups, (b) the means used to promote this national identity are morally permissible, and (c) the resulting sense of national solidarity is used to advance legitimate public goals, including redistribution. For one vision of such a multicultural nationalism, see Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

40 There have been several shocking cases where Canada deported men convicted of crimes to Jamaica, even though they had been brought to Canada from Jamaica as young children.

41 In many cases, the best way to encourage noncitizens to become citizens may be to extend certain proto-citizenship rights to them. For example, extending local voting rights for noncitizens may encourage them to take a greater interest in the political system generally, and ultimately to take a greater interest in national citizenship. But if so, this would reflect a judgment about how to encourage national citizenship, and not a postnational desire to transcend or decenter national citizenship. And if the evidence showed instead that immigrants with local voting rights were less likely to take out national citizenship, then it would be legitimate to withhold local voting rights as an incentive to naturalize.