This article was published in the IAST magazine, 2024/2025 winter issue, exploring the power of belief, from ancient rituals to 21st-century politics. Discover the full PDF here or email us at com@tse-fr.eu for a printed copy.
Inequality eats away at our social fabric, health and moral values, driving citizens apart. It can even harm economic growth. So why is there so little public opposition to growing wealth and income disparities? Why doesn’t political pressure match the runaway revenues of tech barons and CEOs? Is diversity to blame? Returning to IAST from University of Michigan, Charlotte Cavaillé joined Karine Van der Straeten to discuss the impact of immigration on the politics of redistribution.
Why do people disagree about the fairness of public policies?
Charlotte: The impulse to do the “right thing” is central to human cognition. We gain self-respect and social approval from supporting agreed norms of fairness. Most people agree that cooperative behavior should be rewarded and that individual gains be proportional to effort and talent. Where we differ is in our beliefs about the extent to which these norms have been broken. For example, if we believe that high and low earners tend to get what they “deserve”, rising income inequality is unlikely to affect demand for redistribution.
How does nativist populism influence our generosity?
Karine: Research shows we tend to be more generous to members of our own group. In the United States, racial and religious divides reduce support for redistribution. Scholars worry that parochial tendencies are also undermining social solidarity in Europe, given the growth of non-Christian, non-white minority populations. Right-wing populists have mobilized resentment against policies that “unfairly” redistribute to perceived “free riders”, including immigrants who are perceived as over-represented among the poor and unemployed.
Charlotte: Our willingness to help a low-income individual can be reduced by information about their ethnicity or religion. However, once information regarding time spent in the country or birthplace is provided, the strict ethnic penalty disappears. People born abroad are penalized more, but the penalty decreases with time spent in the country.
Karine: Findings like these suggest group boundaries are porous, with generosity conditioned by “deservingness” cues such as work effort and payroll contributions. For example, Charlotte found that when British people are reminded of the National Health Service’s precarious finances, they are more likely to exclude not only immigrants but also smokers and people who have contributed little in taxes.
How has history shaped the struggle to build fairer societies?
Charlotte: Many transatlantic differences were forged by past traumas, including slavery and the Second World War. The politicization of racial boundaries and prejudice preceded the formation of the US welfare state, limiting its redistributive potential. In Europe, immigration-induced ethnic diversity became politically visible only after welfare states had matured into generous, inclusive institutions.
Policy feedback effects play a major role too. Welfare states both rely on and foster high degrees of trust. Once created, social programs can also be hard to roll back due to interest groups formed by recipients and bureaucrats.
How can self-interest mitigate the erosion of solidarity?
Karine: Low-income natives, even if some of them feel some resentment toward immigrants, are strongly motivated by self-interest to preserve social benefits. I have studied such cross-pressured voters in past research with John Roemer and Woojin Lee. Besides, Europe’s social programs are less targeted than in the US, so recipients are less likely to be perceived as “undeserving immigrants”, and it has more cross-pressured voters who are likely to oppose benefit cuts. This may explain why right-wing populists in Europe now favor closed borders with more, not less, redistribution.
Any advice for pro-redistribution politicians?
Charlotte: For policies that redistribute to the worse-off through the welfare state, weak coalitions can be built between low-income voters and richer “bleeding heart liberals” who believe that redistribution is fair because it mostly helps people who deserve to be helped. But for policies that affect the distribution of market income, the anti-egalitarian beliefs of rich voters oblige center-left leaders to focus on fair processes instead of fair outcomes. While equal opportunity policies tend to generate consensual support, they are rarely enough to address the income inequalities generated by a competitive labor market.
Karine: Our review suggests that hostility to immigrants only weakly undermines support for redistributive policies in general. However, a greater threat to social solidarity may come from the targeting of benefits through institutional dualism and resource hoarding, as well as tensions over border control and EU membership. The key question might be 'Who is the recipient?’ rather than ‘How much to share?’.
FIND OUT MORE Charlotte’s book Fair Enough? is published by Cambridge University Press. Karine’s book Racism, Xenophobia, and Distribution, is published by Harvard University Press. Publications by Karine and Charlotte, including ‘Immigration and Support for Redistribution: Lessons from Europe’, are available to view on the IAST website.
