European Welfare States and Immigrant Incorporation Strategies

European policymakers have put a premium on immigrant incorporation since the mid-1970s, when oil shocks preceded rapid economic deterioration in countries that had been importing foreign labour. Governments in all of the receiving countries prohibited additional immigration and announced that their task would thereafter be to incorporate their immigrant-origin residents. Since then, the broader institutions and policies associated with national welfare states — including the subset of them more directly aimed at fitting immigrants into host-society economic, social, and political life — have helped determine immigrant-origin populations’ participation in host-society institutions. While commonly constructed typologies of national welfare states and incorporation regimes have serious shortcomings, the (non-)policies associated with those states and regimes have also moulded ethnic and other identities, influencing whether social control is loosened and conflict sparked. The ongoing restructuring of the welfare state and the transformation of migration into a contentious fixture of socioeconomic reality, therefore, are heavily intertwined developments in contemporary European politics.