Immigration and Public Support for Social Policy: Accounting for the Gender Composition of Immigrant Populations
Associate Professor Friedolin Merhout has published an article in SOCIUS. The article develops the argument that the gender composition of immigrant populations can condition their influence on natives’ social policy preferences.
Understanding how immigration shapes public support for social policy remains a central concern in contemporary sociology, especially against the backdrop of rising global mobility and shifting demographic patterns. In the article “Immigration and Public Support for Social Policy: Accounting for the Gender Composition of Immigrant Populations,” Merhout and colleagues ask whether the current, inconclusive state of the literature is partially related to the common monolithic treatment of immigrant. In contrast to this conventional approach, the article develops the argument that the gender composition of immigrant populations can condition their influence on natives’ social policy preferences.
To investigate this, the study draws on cross-national data from sources including the International Social Survey Programme and United Nations demographic records. Using statistical models that disentangle differences in the immigrant stock between countries from variations in that stock within countries and accounting for the gender distribution in the population, the authors test theoretical expectations about how different demographic compositions relate to public attitudes toward a broad set of social policies.
The results indicate that the overall impact of immigration on social policy support is consistent after accounting for the moderating role of the proportion of women among the immigrant populations. Specifically, when immigrant populations include a rising share of women, negative associations with social policy support are weaker; conversely, decreasing shares of immigrant women are linked to reduced support for social policies among native populations as the immigrant stock grows. These findings point to the importance of accounting for gendered perceptions and demographic nuance in analyses of immigration’s social and political consequences.
Read the article in the online journal SOCIUS here.