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Record-high levels of international migration both toward and across Europe have recently given rise to a new body of research on the social protection of immigrants. A recurring argument in this literature maintains that migrants are generally more likely to gain access to social benefits in generous welfare states. The article offers a critical review of this hypothesis with a focus on unemployment benefit provision. The tides of European welfare politics have produced a set of systems in the past which are today highly stratified on the basis of employment. This mechanism generates a considerable benefit gap in reference to migration, especially for those who arrived to their country of residency only recently. Empirical analyses with micro-level data for 14 Western European countries provide supporting evidence for this argument. The findings indicate a negative relationship between generosity and social protection which has not been accounted for in previous research.

Unemployment insurance systems are designed to provide income security for those who drop out of work temporarily. This form of social protection is particularly relevant for foreign-born workers who are, on average, more likely to become unemployed during layoffs. The article explores how the social protection of immigrants differs in cases where payments are tied to voluntary rather than mandatory contributions. This is done by focusing on a recent welfare reform in Sweden which led to both a sharp increase in costs and a decline in benefit generosity overnight. It is argued that migrants lost their social protection at a disproportionate rate over the course of the reform. Both their status on the labour market and position as newcomers to the norms and rules of society are expected to impede on their decision to obtain or prolong insurance membership, leading to a decline in eligibility to income security. Difference-in-difference estimates with administrative data from all unemployment insurance funds show that the share of benefit recipients with earnings-related payments decreased at a higher rate among the foreign-born as expected, especially if they had arrived in the country only recently.

Payment cuts, or ‘sanctions’, are used in many welfare systems as a means of disciplining recipients whose compliance with the rules of benefit provision is deemed insufficient. Prior research with help of interviews and survey experiments suggests that risks of discrimination and stereotyping are prevalent in this context, leading to a particularly high sanction probability among recipients who were born outside their country of residency. This study contributes to the literature by shifting the analytical focus from the abstract reasoning of case managers about hypothetical decisions to the actual implementation of payment cuts on the ground in local welfare offices. It does so empirically with help of a record linkage between survey and register data for the case of job search requirements in the German social assistance system. The results indicate that benefit recipients tend to have a lower sanction risk if they were born abroad, especially if they have arrived in Germany only recently in search of international protection. These findings point to a more complex relationship between immigration and sanction risk than has been previously suggested. They support the contention that a person’s migration background can also act as a mitigating factor for the probability of a payment cut in the context of welfare governance.