Abstract

Inequality has been rising in advanced industrialised countries. At the same time, increased immigration has accentuated the ethnic diversity of those countries. Both developments have created challenges for advanced industrialised countries to integrate immigrants into the country.

Immigration and Poverty examines how advanced industrialised countries integrate immigrants into the labour market and welfare state and how this influences immigrant poverty. The main argument draws on insights from two research strands, the comparative welfare state and the migration literature. In brief, this book argues that a country’s labour market and welfare system does not directly influence immigrants’ poverty but is conditional on immigrants’ social rights, here understood as their labour market and welfare state access. Immigration and Poverty argues and shows that it is crucial to embed migration-specific policies within a country’s prevailing institutional setting to understand why immigrants fare better in some countries as compared to others.
Situated at the intersection of literatures on welfare regimes and immigration regimes, this comprehensive and nuanced study explores how social rights affect the incidence of poverty among immigrants in advanced countries. Cleverly, Eugster exploits variation between categories of immigrants as well as variation between countries to advance novel arguments. By focusing our attention on how immigrants are faring, her book represents a refreshing corrective to the current preoccupation with the implications of immigration for the fortunes and attitudes of “natives.”
Jonas Pontusson, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Geneva
Integrating insights from the welfare state literature, the migration literature and the study on welfare chauvinism, Eugster provides a meticulous study on how institutional arrangements shape the integration of both forced and voluntary immigrants. Based on an original dataset on migrants’ social rights and poverty risks in advanced societies, she finds the poverty risks of immigrants are strongly dependent on the extent of social rights in their new countries. Immigrants and Poverty enhances our understanding of how the integration of both voluntary and involuntary migrants can succeed and provides a starting point for policy making. In times of heated politicization of migration to advanced societies, this book is a must read for scholars and policy makers and will have a profound impact in academic research and public policy making.
Hanna Schwander, Professor of Public Policy, Hertie School of Governance
Beatrice Eugster is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Her research interests include comparative welfare state research, immigration and national identity, and more recently political communication with a focus on the European integration (politicization and Euroskepticism) and the effects of media communication about immigrants.
Combining the literatures on welfare systems and immigration policies in new and innovative ways, Beatrice Eugster shows that the composition of the immigrant population and immigrants’ varying social rights condition the impact of a country’s labour market and welfare system on immigrants’ poverty. This book is a must-read for everybody interested in the socio-economic integration of immigrants and welfare chauvinism.
Patrick Emmenegger, Professor of Comparative Political Economy and Public Policy, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland