Sociology Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-24-2025
Abstract
With increasing global mobility, scholars have debated whether immigration undermines welfare states. So far, no conclusive evidence of a consistent association between immigration and social policy support has emerged. This might be due to treating immigrants as a monolithic mass. To begin addressing this, the authors account for the gender composition of immigrant populations. Drawing on research on attitudes toward immigration, immigration policy, and gendered tropes of immigrants, the authors develop two hypotheses detailing how the share of women among immigrants moderates that population’s impact on individuals’ social policy support. Testing these hypotheses on International Social Survey Programme and United Nations data, the authors find no evidence of a predominant demographic or coexisting immigrant threats. Instead, the results show a consistent pattern between immigration and social policy support aligning with a dominant trope of “deviant immigrant men” posing a criminal threat. Specifically, increasing immigrant populations predict reduced support as the share of women among them decreases.
Recommended Citation
Edelmann, Achim, Friedolin Merhout, and Amie Bostic. "Immigration and Public Support for Social Policy: Accounting for the Gender Composition of Immigrant Populations." Socius 11 (2025): 23780231251400402. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231251400402
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Publication Title
Socius
DOI
10.1177/23780231251400402
Comments
© The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).