This thesis compares the welfare state positions of FvD to the welfare state positions of other European populist radical right parties in terms of welfare chauvinism, welfare producerism, and...Show moreThis thesis compares the welfare state positions of FvD to the welfare state positions of other European populist radical right parties in terms of welfare chauvinism, welfare producerism, and welfare populism.Show less
There has been a growing body of research into exclusionary policy reforms that aim to restrict immigrants’ possibilities of gaining access to welfare state benefits, sometimes referred to as ...Show moreThere has been a growing body of research into exclusionary policy reforms that aim to restrict immigrants’ possibilities of gaining access to welfare state benefits, sometimes referred to as ‘immigrant-excluding welfare reforms’ (Koning, 2019). But despite increased attention for these policy changes, detailed studies into the drivers of their emergence and eventual implementation have remained scarce. This thesis confronts said literature gap by way of an in-depth qualitative case study of three immigrant-excluding welfare reforms in Belgium’s system of social assistance. Drawing on the existing literature, an analytical strategy is developed to meet the dual objective of (a) qualifying the nature of exclusionary reforms and (b) exploring their emergence and implementation through processtracing. The main results are the following. The qualifying analysis reinforces the notion that in Belgium - like in many other countries - social assistance provision has been increasingly linked to immigration law. The Belgian federal government’s objectives underpinning this ‘welfare-immigration policy linkage’ (Slaven, Casella Colombeau, & Badenhoop, 2021) relate to the desire to steer migration dynamics - resonating with the welfare magnet hypothesis (Borjas, 1999) - as well as to maintain support for welfare state redistribution through retrenchment. The exploratory analysis yields the conclusion that the long-term dynamics of immigrant-excluding welfare reforms in Belgium can be summarized as a combination of relatively high political pressures to restrict immigrants’ access, but also strong institutional constraints on the implementation of exclusionary policy change (comparable to the Netherlands, see Banting & Koning, 2017). The main recommendation for future studies is that additional in-depth research should be welcomed to more fundamentally unfold this complex interplay of pressures and constraints, whereby special attention should go out to the influence that (constitutional) courts exert on the eventual outcomes of exclusionary reforms after their initial implementation.Show less
