UCL Uncovering Politics - Do Higher Benefits Encourage Immigration?

Do Higher Benefits Encourage Immigration?

03/16/23 • 30 min

Immigration is back near the top of the political agenda, here in the UK and elsewhere. The UK government’s so-called ‘Stop the Boats Bill’, which targets those who cross the Channel in search of asylum, is one rather extreme manifestation of the idea that you can stop unwanted migration by making it unattractive. A wider expression of the same view is the concept of ‘benefit tourism’: the idea that migrants are more likely to come if welfare benefits are higher, and that and that you can therefore reduce immigration be keeping benefits low.

Now, there are clearly questions to ask about whether such ideas are morally defensible, but it’s also important to ask whether they work on their own terms. And new research carried out here at UCL casts important doubt on that. We are joined by one of the co-authors of that research, Dr Moritz Marbach, Associate Professor in Data Science & Public Policy in the UCL Department of Political Science.

Mentioned in this episode:

Jeremy Ferwerda, Moritz Marbach and Dominik Hangartner, ‘Do Immigrants Move to Welfare? Subnational Evidence from Switzerland’

UCL’s Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy offers a uniquely stimulating environment for the study of all fields of politics, including international relations, political theory, human rights, public policy-making and administration. The Department is recognised for its world-class research and policy impact, ranking among the top departments in the UK on both the 2021 Research Excellence Framework and the latest Guardian rankings.

Mentioned in this episode:

Jeremy Ferwerda, Moritz Marbach and Dominik Hangartner, ‘Do Immigrants Move to Welfare? Subnational Evidence from Switzerland’

Previous Episode

The Politics of Ordinary Hope

This week, we have a slightly different kind of episode to normal. Rather than discussing an academic publication, we’ll be looking at the ideas and career of Professor Marc Stears.

Marc is currently the inaugural director of the UCL policy lab, set up to break down the barriers between academic researchers and broader society. His career to date has included stints in academia at Cambridge, Oxford and Macquaire, being the Chief Speechwriter of the Labour Party, writing major speeches for Ed Milliband, the CEO of the New Economics Foundation, and the Director of the Sydney Policy Lab.

Marc has some big ideas about politics and political reform. Two particularly attractive and compelling facets of Marc's work, found especially in two of his books, Out of the Ordinary and Demanding Democracy, are his optimism about the prospects for a better politics, and his vision of putting citizens at the heart of change and progress. His work offers us a faith in ordinary people, and in the possibility of a non-utopian kind of ordinary hope – and these are ideas that we discuss in this episode.

Mentioned in this episode:

Next Episode

Brexit and Northern Ireland

In 1998, after three decades of conflict, lasting peace was achieved in Northern Ireland through an accord variously known as the Good Friday Agreement or the Belfast Agreement. The 25th anniversary of that Agreement comes next month.

Though there are problems – the institutions of power-sharing government established through the Agreement are currently suspended, and pockets of paramilitary violence remain – the settlement reached a quarter of a century ago has been strikingly successful in its central aim: conflict has not returned; and contestation over Northern Ireland’s constitutional future is now conducted solely by political means. People in Northern Ireland have lived in much greater freedom and security as a result. For most people, life has got much better.

Nevertheless, 30 years of conflict were always going to leave lasting legacies that would take time to heal. And research conducted in part here in UCL is exploring those legacies and comparing them with patterns found in other post-conflict societies around the world.

This week we are joined by Professor Kristin Bakke and Dr Kit Rickard.

Mentioned in this episode: