Labor Migration from Central Asia to Russia

Large-scale labor migration from Central Asia to Russia began in the early 2000s, spurred by the rapid take-off of Russia’s economy and high demand for labor there, while most states on the Central Asian periphery were declining economically (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2). By 2010, Russia had become “the center of a regional migration system encompassing the countries of the former Soviet Union, second in global importance only to the migration system centered on the United States and encompassing Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean” (Light Reference Light2016, 51). Russia’s government had limited experience with unplanned immigration. From the end of World War II until 1989, its Soviet predecessor barred most emigration and strictly regulated entry and internal movement. The first large, unplanned migration into Russia came after communism’s collapse. It was comprised mainly of people who fled other post-Soviet states during the 1990s for ethnic and political reasons. Many were ethnic Russians. While several million came and the process was often chaotic, the majority had rights to Russian citizenship based on their former Soviet citizenship, without regard to ethnicity.³ Some did remain as unregistered migrants, but few laws and processes for coping with foreign immigrants were established during this period (Buckley, Ruble and Hofmann Reference Buckley, Ruble and Hofmann2008; Light Reference Light2016; Moonyoung Reference Moonyoung2020). As a consequence, Russia’s government had little administrative capacity to manage, even to register and track, the large numbers of Central Asians who came through the visa-free regime after 2000. By this point, citizenship laws had been tightened to favor only ethnic Russians. CA migrants had rights to stay in Russia briefly, with no permission to work, but many remained as undocumented labor migrants.

Central Asian migrants came for jobs mostly in construction, agriculture, and the burgeoning personal services sectors in Russia’s “global cities,” Moscow and St. Petersburg. At first most were male. Over time, increasing numbers of women came to meet the demand for domestic and care workers from the growing ranks of Russia’s affluent urban professionals and middle class. By 2007, women comprised about one-third of the total. Because many were circular or seasonal migrants, it is difficult to estimate the numbers actually staying in Russia, but the total number of entries grew to several million by mid-decade (Schenk Reference Schenk2018). In 2006, Putin’s government, attempting to “regularize” the status of those already working in Russia as well as some newcomers, established a quota of work permits that would allow up to six million migrants to live and work legally in Russia. The quota system worked poorly, however, and the number of permits was soon cut, partly because of growing political pressures to limit migration that were sparked by the 2008 financial crisis. While later efforts were made to regularize labor migrants’ status, a large majority remained undocumented (Light Reference Light2016; Schenk Reference Schenk2018).

Without legal status, migrants had only the minimal social rights provided by UN conventions that Russia’s government had approved (e.g., the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNHCR 1989), the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families (UNCHR 1990). These conventions have notoriously weak enforcement mechanisms. In reality, migrants’ access to social and other essential services depended on the Russian government’s policies and practices. Labor migrants and their families initially benefited from some degree of social inclusion through the quota system as well as formal and informal practices in the social sector, including medical services for women and children. However, fiscal and political pressures led to growing welfare nationalist politics and exclusionary policy changes. These changes had by 2013 resulted in migrants’ nearly complete exclusion from Russia’s social sector, as well as labor market restrictions, and increasingly punitive and exploitative treatment.

Intra-EU CEE Labor Migration to the EU15: “A Continent Moving West”

By contrast with Russia, most EU15 governments had considerable experience with state-managed legal migration in the decades after World War II. Of the countries considered in this study, Britain admitted large numbers of immigrants from former colonies in South Asia and the Caribbean to help rebuild its postwar economy. Initially, policies were broadly inclusive, providing full social rights and citizenship. Germany imported temporary labor migrants from Turkey and elsewhere to work on short-term contracts and granted them very limited social rights. However, as many stayed and formed or brought families, their social (though not political) rights expanded gradually. Sweden needed few labor migrants in the postwar period, but along with Germany and Britain, it accepted and incorporated large contingents of asylum seekers. (Of the two remaining cases considered here, Italy, much poorer than the first three, remained a country of emigration in the postwar period, while communist Poland was largely closed.) When economic growth in Europe slowed in the 1970s, most new labor immigration was limited or halted, although numbers continued to grow through family reunification and other means. With the contraction of European welfare states beginning in the 1980s, the social rights of those newly arriving in Europe were cut, and stratification between citizens and non-citizens increased.

The 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which established the EU’s open labor market, institutionalized a new, privileged category of migrants who held European citizenship. EU rules guaranteed “free movement of labor” within the Union, including rights to enter any member state and seek employment. Those who found jobs in formal labor markets were entitled to equality with receiving states’ citizens with respect to labor and social rights, in effect Europeanizing social rights (Olsen Reference Olsen2008; Sabates-Wheeler and Feldman Reference Sabates-Wheeler and Feldman2011). These rules seemed to work as long as the numbers of people migrating within the Union remained modest, and most moved between EU15 states that had fairly similar standards of living. The scale of labor migration within the EU increased radically after the 2004 accession of eight CEE states (EU8) which had average per capita GDPs less than half of the EU15 average. Bulgaria and Romania, acceding in 2007, had yet lower average per capita GDPs (Grundmann et al. Reference Grundmann, Kreischer, Scott, Griebel, Sturm and Winkelmann2017, 49, Fig. 4.7). In what Black called ‘A Continent Moving West,’⁴ hundreds of thousands from these new, poorer member states began migrating in search of higher wages and living standards. They produced intra-EU labor migration on an unprecedented scale and tempo, that shocked the EU’s internal migration system. By far the largest numbers after 2004 went to Britain (see Figures 5.1 and 5.2.)

CEE migrants could in theory have gone to any of the EU15, but most of these states had placed restrictions on access to their labor markets for seven years, a “moratorium” that was allowed by the EU.⁵ Britain was the only large economy that opened almost completely in 2004, so it received by far the largest number of CEE migrants, the majority from Poland (see Figures 5.1 and 5.2). Most were young, educated adults who worked below their skill levels in Britain. Initially they benefitted from the EU’s mandated social guarantees, ‘equal to those of citizens of receiving states.’ Over time, though CEE labor migrants were progressively excluded from most social rights and benefits by legislative changes and bureaucratic denials. While anti-immigrant politics in Britain and other EU states was far more law-governed than in Russia and embedded in democratic political processes, the economic drivers of welfare nationalism were broadly similar in the two cases: the long-term deterioration of labor markets and welfare states, and the social and economic effects of the 2008 financial crisis. Exclusionary pressures to restrict migration from CEE states as well as migrants’ EU-mandated rights played a major role in Britain’s vote to exit from the EU in 2016.

CEE labor migrants also went to Sweden, which opened its much smaller labor market in 2004, and later to Germany, Italy, and other EU15 states. All experienced more gradual immigration than Britain, and all remained in the EU. However, their governments followed the British model ‘part of the way’ in restricting labor and social rights of EU labor migrants after 2016. Each adopted administrative changes and informal practices that discriminated against the younger, less-skilled, and less ‘European’ intra-EU labor migrants. Many could find work only in the informal sectors of Europe’s deteriorating labor markets. Those from Bulgaria and especially Romania fared worst.

The MENA Migration to Europe and Russia: Mixing Asylum Seekers and Irregular Migrants

The MENA migration to Europe that began in 2011 famously reached a peak of more than one million in 2015, with much smaller numbers entering Russia (see Figures 6.1, 6.3, and 6.4). It included people, sometimes whole families, from war-torn or violent states, especially Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Many had claims to asylum under the terms of the UN’s 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Others were labor or economic migrants from various states of origin, while the status of many was indeterminate. When the MENA migration began, CEE labor migration, which had dipped during the 2008 recession, was again growing. All EU labor markets were open to EU8 citizens and would soon be open to those from the EU2, Bulgaria, and Romania. In Russia, immigration from Central Asia continued while the economy, after a fairly weak recovery from the 2008 recession, began a more gradual downturn in 2012. In sum, by 2012 there were two streams of migration to Russia – very large from Central Asia and small from Syria. In Europe, there were two large streams: East-to-West migration within the EU and the MENA migration.

People fleeing warfare, conflict, or persecution in their home countries to seek refuge abroad are formally classified as asylum seekers. Their rights and treatment, including the right to enter a foreign state and apply for international protection, are determined by international and regional agreements, beginning with the UN’s foundational 1951 Geneva Convention and the later protocols. All the states covered in this study, including Poland and Russia after the Soviet collapse, had signed the Geneva Convention as well as later related UN agreements (Hatton Reference Hatton2012; Lülf Reference Lülf2019). The EU also had in place a Common European Asylum System (CEAS) that established minimum standards for asylum seekers’ rights and for processing of their claims in member states (Costello Reference Costello2016). After the post-World War II period, numbers seeking asylum in Europe remained modest and stable through the 1970s. After that time, conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe produced large inflows of asylum seekers that spiked in the early 1990s (Hatton Reference Hatton2012, 6–8). The first serious restrictions on migrants’ access to Europe were put in place during this period.

The number of asylum seekers coming to Europe again declined and remained manageable until 2011, when multiple crises in the Middle East and North Africa produced mass inflows from several countries simultaneously. As MENA migrants entered Europe, many people, churches, and non-governmental organizations welcomed and aided them, and some have continued to do so. Some governments, most notably Germany and Sweden, initially granted refugee status to large numbers, mostly Syrians. Britain and Italy accepted smaller numbers. European governments and organizations, including the European Union and the Council of Europe, initially affirmed commitments to the asylum system and UN-mandated international protections (Da Lomba Reference Da Lomba2015). In 2015, the EU tried unsuccessfully to distribute MENA asylum seekers among member states. As numbers kept growing, however, policy moved in a harshly exclusionary direction.

Across Europe, the MENA migration mobilized or energized strong anti-immigrant, welfare nationalist, and populist opposition movements and parties that challenged centrist governing parties and coalitions. Especially from 2015, when the peak of the migration coincided with Islamic extremists’ terrorist attacks in Europe, MENA migrants were associated with terrorism, and hostility toward them grew. From this point, the EU and its member states implemented multiple strategies to secure Europe’s borders and prevent asylum seekers from leaving their home regions or reaching the continent. For those who did reach Europe, newly restrictive policies and practices made it increasingly difficult to seek or obtain protected status, while detention and deportations increased. With no other alternatives, tens of thousands lived in refugee camps in Italy, Greece, and elsewhere in Europe, or in Turkey or North Africa, where the EU subsidizes governments to maintain them. Much smaller numbers of MENA migrants, from Syria, went to Russia, where most who applied were initially granted temporary asylum (see Figure 6.4). After 2015, however, they were denied further protection and pressured to leave Russia.

An indeterminate number of those who joined the MENA migration, most from Africa and some from poor Southeast European states (mainly Albania and Kosovo), had no Geneva-based claim to asylum. They were economic migrants from more or less “safe” countries of origin. The Geneva Convention, designed in response to the Holocaust, guarantees protection from persecution on the basis of race, color, sex, religion or faith, birth, or wealth, but there are no international protections against poverty, insecurity or destitution. The task of distinguishing those at risk from those seeking opportunity was challenging. In practice, those from countries that were broadly recognized to be at war – Syria and Iraq – were most often granted asylum in the migration’s early years. After 2015, MENA migrants were indiscriminately physically excluded, prevented from entering Europe, or summarily deported. Entry categories and legitimacy of asylum claims, which did matter before this point, lost much of their significance as securitization became dominant. Numbers entering Europe from the MENA region declined dramatically by 2018.

Anti-immigrant welfare nationalist politics mobilized in response to the large increases in CA, CEE and MENA immigration, but it was driven by longer-term changes in economies of receiving states and the social welfare of their populations. I now turn to the economic dimension, deterioration of labor markets, welfare, and social security from the 1980s and the growth of austerity in Europe and Russia, showing how these conditions affected nationals and shaped responses to immigration.

Labor Markets: Precarious Jobs and Fragile Social Insurance

One of the common populist charges against migrants is that they take or compete for jobs, depress wages, and otherwise damage employment opportunities and conditions for nationals. This claim holds for low-skilled, low-wage workers and for specific economic sectors. However, much larger numbers of European and Russian nationals have been affected by shifts from standard employment (SE) – that is, full-time, long-term jobs that provide a living wage and social insurance – to non-standard and informal work. These shifts have produced declines in job security, wages, eligibility for social insurance, and other employment conditions. Deterioration of labor markets in Europe and Russia has been the subject of much expert attention and analysis (Gimpelson Reference Gimpelson2004; Boonstra Reference Boonstra2012; Smirnykh and Wörgötter Reference Smirnykh and Wörgötter2015; ILO 2014; 2016; Standing Reference Standing2016; Schmid and Wagner Reference Schmid and Wagner2017; Agarwala Reference Agarwala2018; Eurofound 2018; Brodolini 2018). Employment in such markets is variously labeled precarious, non-standard, irregular, fixed-term, part-time, contract work, agency, temporary, or casual work, and most evocatively, “junk jobs.” Guy Standing (Reference Standing2016) famously labeled workers holding such jobs the “precariat,” a “class” experiencing a complex of work insecurity, inadequate income, lack of protection against dismissal, uncertain length of employment, and little access to social insurance (McKay et al. Reference McKay, Jefferys, Paraskevopoulou and Keles2012). Precarity has continued to increase, especially among those with lower levels of education, women, and young workers.

Growth of Non-standard and Informal Employment

As Rina Agarwala (Reference Agarwala2018) reminds us, European and Russian workers experienced an employment “standard” that was historically exceptional, only ever encompassing a minority of the global labor force, mainly in the twentieth century in advanced industrial states. It always excluded the vast majority in the Global South as well as the lower strata of workers in the North. Nevertheless, “standard employment” became the norm in Europe and in the poorer industrial economies of the Soviet Union/Russia, and CEE. In both sets of states, it formed part of a complex of social, labor market, and fiscal policies that largely maintained living standards, stability, and labor peace. While a majority of workers have remained in standard employment, by 2014, slightly above 40 percent in the EU28 were in non-standard employment (NSE), defined as temporary or part-time work or self-employment (see Figure 2.1). All categories of NSE have increased significantly since the 1980s (Matsaganis et al. Reference Matsaganis, Ozdemir, Ward and Zavakou2016, 10–11; Eurofound 2018). In the Russian Federation, where labor markets were liberalized later, an estimated 15 percent of those employed worked in non-standard jobs by 2008 (Karabchuk Reference Karabchuk2010; Storrie Reference Storrie2015; Tsygankova and Ivanova Reference Tsygankova and Ivanova2017).

Figure 2.1 Total employed in nonstandard employment in the United Kingdom (Britain), Sweden, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Russia in 2014 (percent)

Source: Eurostat, Labour Force Survey for the EU and Poland; ILOSTAT, Labour Force Survey for Russia.

Non-standard employment (NSE) is a legal part of the formal labor market; wages, production, and other transactions are officially recorded and taxed, although contributions to social insurance often fall below levels that make workers eligible for benefits. NSE is, however, largely unregulated by labor laws, leaving workers with few guarantees or protections (although they may be covered by state laws on health and safety and others). Levels of part-time, fixed-term, and self-employment vary across cases (Matsaganis et al. Reference Matsaganis, Ozdemir, Ward and Zavakou2016). Figure 2.1 shows the proportions for each type of employment for the book’s six cases in 2014. As the figure shows, substantial parts of the labor forces in all six were in NSE, though rates were markedly lower in Russia than in the European states. Italy had nearly equal proportions of all three types of NSE. Poland had the highest proportion of temporary contract workers, which had increased from 4.6 percent of the labor force in 1999 to 28.2 percent in 2007 and affected mainly young workers entering the labor force (Eichhorst Reference Eichhorst2014). One-fourth of Germany’s young workers were on fixed-term contracts. Britain had the highest percentage of self-employed in Europe, a phenomenon of the post-2008 economy that particularly affected CEE labor migrants (Smirnykh and Wörgötter 2015). Both Sweden and Russia introduced short-term agency work as a form of legal employment (Kozina Reference Kozina2013). In Russia, most NSE involved part-time or temporary (agency) work, while self-employment remained rare (Gimpelson and Kapelyushnikov Reference Gimpelson and Kapeliushnikov2005; Karabchuk Reference Karabchuk2010; Vinogradova, Kozina and Cook Reference Vinogradova, Kozina and Cook2015; Soboleva Reference Soboleva2020).

Welfare States: Contraction and Crises

In contemporary Europe and Russia, major categories of social benefits are divided into those based on citizenship or long-term legal residence, on the one hand, and those linked to employment and social insurance contributions on the other. This division is not entirely consistent, but it represents an important distinction. Citizenship-based benefits provide much broader coverage of populations, as eligibility does not require current or past employment. To be eligible for employment-based benefits, workers must have jobs in the formal economy. In most cases, only those in standard employment are fully covered. Table 2.2 presents a stylized summary of nationals’ social rights, including sources of financing, variation in eligibility, and effects of standard, non-standard, and informal employment on financing of social benefits.⁷

As Table 2.2 shows, health care, social assistance of various kinds, and social pensions (i.e., social assistance payments for the retirement-aged) are generally provided as universal citizenship-based benefits regardless of employment status or history. Benefits for particular categories, most commonly child benefits, are usually universal for the category. Employment-linked benefits depend on individual work histories. The structure of welfare benefits is roughly similar for Russian nationals, although pension and other social insurance payments are much lower in comparison to average wages. It should be kept in mind that individuals and households may mix two or all three types of employment, accumulating at least some work-based eligibility (ILO 2016, 2017).

The growth of non-standard and informal employment has proven extremely detrimental to European and Russian welfare states. Their social insurance systems were designed around full-time, long-term employment in which workers accumulated contributions over decades. NSE erodes both the financial viability and breadth of coverage of pension and other insurance programs. Informal employment is yet more deeply corrosive, sheltering wage payments and financial transactions from taxation while leaving more workers dependent on government assistance during periods of illness, disability, or retirement. Concentrations in NSE of young workers, who would normally contribute to social insurance for long periods before collecting, deplete national insurance risk pools. Payment levels of social assistance and pensions often leave recipients in or near poverty, in contrast to the more adequate wage-linked pension insurance and other benefits that are available to workers in standard employment.

Financial Crises and Their Effects

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis

The 2008 global financial crisis dealt a major shock to the economies of Europe and Russia. Figure 2.2 shows the dramatic drop in GDP growth per capita across the six cases. With the exception of Poland, all contracted between 5 and 8 percent. Russia was the worst-affected, with growth falling by 8 percent, while Sweden, Germany, Britain, and Italy followed closely. Everywhere the crisis drove down investment and increased unemployment, in some cases to double digits. Wages declined to varying degrees, and labor market conditions worsened. Social spending in some cases increased to compensate for losses during the crisis, but the real value of benefits fell, and a wave of austerity measures was imposed once the crisis had ended. While most of the economies recovered, growth remained below pre-crisis rates. Figure 2.2 also shows the slump in growth caused by the 2012 Eurozone crisis as well as decline in Russia’s growth since 2012 (both are discussed later). For my study, it is most significant that financial crises and slumps in European and Russian economies coincided with mass immigration.

Figure 2.2 GDP per capita growth (annual percent) in Germany, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom (Britain), Poland, and Russian Federation, 2000–2019

Source: World Bank Indicators, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG.

It is especially when times are bad that the need for secure employment and social protection becomes manifest. The 2008 crisis exacerbated the effects of NSE and heightened awareness of precarity among workers. When demand for labor declined, enterprises adapted mainly by “dumping” workers with nonstandard contracts, which was the easiest way for them to downsize. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound 2018, 18–19), reported on the effects:

The pre-recession growth in non-standard employment coincided with a uniquely long and strong period of economic growth that may have masked the emerging fragility of the various forms of worker protection that are an integral part of a social market economy. The recession revealed this inadequacy. Moreover, perceptions of security are strongly influenced by recent experiences. Thus, while in principle a worker may know that the job is insecure, de jure, the widespread loss of temporary jobs that occurred during the recession revealed in most concrete fashion their de facto insecurity. These recent concrete experiences of insecurity may then have impacted on current perceptions and expectations.

Contraction of Welfare States in Europe and Russia

Migrants’ access to social benefits and services has played a large role in animating welfare nationalism. Populist politicians characterize their states as “welfare magnets,” attracting migrant “welfare tourists” who came in order to take social benefits that nationals earned through tax payments. In the three migrations discussed above, popular ire focused especially on health care, which appeared easily accessible at Britain’s National Health Service, Russia’s polyclinics, and health facilities throughout Europe. Social assistance payments to CEE labor migrants, including housing, unemployment, and especially child benefits, became highly contentious issues. Registration in social security schemes by those who had only recently arrived and begun work provoked outrage. The arrival of hundreds of thousands of MENA migrants, many of whom had lost everything and initially needed the most basic assistance, made the welfare nationalist argument more compelling. These specific anti-immigrant grievances – access to health care, child and other social benefits – which dominated welfare nationalist discourses, connect directly with declines in nationals’ welfare provision in Europe and Russia.

After WWII, European welfare states expanded for three decades, while Russian and Polish welfare states followed broadly similar trajectories. Over time, the costs of these welfare commitments grew. As the number of pensioners increased, so too did the costs of pay-outs. As populations aged and medical technologies advanced, health care costs rose. Social benefit and assistance programs, once established, tend to grow both bureaucracies and beneficiaries who lobby for their maintenance and expansion (Pierson Reference Pierson1995). In the 1980s, under various economic and other pressures, European welfare states began to contract. Types and degrees of change varied across cases, but the overall pattern of stagnation and retrenchment held fairly constant. Russia and Poland followed the trajectory of contraction, also beginning in the 1980s, exacerbated by sharp transitional recessions during the 1990s (Gugashvili, Lukac and van Oorschot Reference Gugushvili, Lukac and van Oorschot2021). Driven by economic pressures and neo-liberal ideological conversions, both governments radically retrenched their social sectors. Overall, the role of welfare states in cushioning populations from the effects of competitive markets shrank (Cook and Titterton Reference Cook and Titterton2023).

Welfare is a complex subject that has produced a vast body of literature. My purpose here is limited to making the case that welfare states’ contraction functioned as a driver of welfare nationalism. I argue that objective stresses on social expenditures, combined with populations’ direct experience of welfare losses (i.e., declining real value of benefits), lent credibility to populists’ anti-immigrant welfare nationalist appeals. They provided a compelling narrative of causation for nationals’ very real insecurity and welfare losses and proposed a seemingly reasonable solution: exclude migrants from welfare so that more resources could be distributed to nationals. To show the extent of welfare losses that preceded mass migration, I focus on changes in three major categories of benefits: retirement pensions, social payments, and health care (Korpi Reference Korpi2003; Korpi and Palme Reference Korpi and Palme2003).⁸

Pensions and health care are the big-ticket items in welfare states, and both have major effects on societies’ well-being. Social benefits, though less costly, are paid directly to those eligible, providing one of the best metrics for people’s tangible experience of welfare state generosity and adequacy. Other standard measures of welfare state effort serve the purpose less well. The percent of GDP spent on welfare tells nothing about who gets what. In economic downturns, expenditures may increase even as the real value of pay-outs declines because more people become eligible for existing benefits (for example, when unemployment increases, the cost of unemployment benefits rises). Governments retrench in other ways than cutting benefits, but these three measures seem well-calculated to capture what nationals were getting and were expected to share with waves of labor migrants, asylum seekers, and others.

Health Care: Unmet Needs

Health care is arguably the most important service provided by welfare states, a key contributor to people’s well-being, longevity, and quality of life. Migrants’ use and alleged misuse of health services is the flagship issue of welfare nationalists, especially in Britain and Russia. In contrast to other areas of welfare, health expenditures have been relatively well maintained in Europe and recovered to pre-crisis levels in Russia by 2008. Expenditures continued their upward trajectory until the 2008 financial crisis, although subsequently they leveled off or decreased, and in several cases, they had not regained pre-crisis per capita levels by 2018 (see Figure 2.3). Although spending has not declined as significantly as in other areas, there is a widespread perception that health services do not meet nationals’ needs. Waiting times for medical appointments are a high-priority issue in Sweden, Poland, and Britain.

Figure 2.3 Domestic general government health expenditure per capita (current US$) in the United Kingdom (Britain), Germany, Sweden, Russian Federation, Poland, and Italy, 2000–2018

Source: World Health Organization Global Health Expenditure database (apps.who.int/nha/database), 2021.

Even before the Covid pandemic, waits for non-urgent treatment – to see specialists, for diagnostic tests, and for elective surgery – extended for weeks or months, in some cases worsening health outcomes. Waiting time for cancer treatment remains an issue in a majority of European countries (OECD 2020). One-fourth of adults aged eighteen and over in OECD countries report having unmet health needs (i.e., forgoing or delaying care), usually because services are not available or are unaffordable (OECD 2019).

The situation with health care is worse in the post-communist cases, Poland and Russia. Poland was the first CEE state to eliminate citizens’ universal rights to health care, although coverage remains broad. The government increased per capita health expenditures only modestly, and levels of reported “unmet health needs” remained high. In Russia major health indicators, including life expectancy and infant mortality, which deteriorated during the 1990s, improved sharply after 2000 (Cook Reference Cook and Yi2017a). Russian citizens, however, report deep dissatisfaction with the quality, accessibility and efficiency of public health services. In a 2014–2015 nationwide sociological survey on trends in social anxiety, respondents were asked to identify perceived social risks. Quality of health care and fear of diseases ranked third in a long list of citizens’ fears and apprehensions. Nearly half identified it as a problem that “greatly concerns” them (Dolgorukova et al. Reference Dolgorukova, Kirilina, Mazaev and Iudina2017). A recent study focusing on public evaluation of health care systems found exceptionally high levels of unequal access, corruption, and social exclusion in Russia (Salnikova Reference Salnikova2023).

Need and Vulnerability

Need is one of the central criteria for making legitimate claims on the resources of the community. In most countries, the elderly and ill, as well as other vulnerable groups, are recognized as deserving on this basis (Gugashvili, Lukac and van Oorschot Reference Gugushvili, Lukac and van Oorschot2021). Judgments about need often consider the claimant’s control: whether she can affect the situation and is willing to help herself, for example, whether an unemployed person is actively seeking work or not; whether an immigrant chose to leave his home country or was forced to leave by armed conflict. The unemployed who fail to seek work, or migrants who voluntarily leave “safe” countries of origin, are considered less deserving than those who had no choice. According to Nielsen et al. (Reference Nielsen, Frederiksen and Albrekt Larsen2020), a refugee is most often defined as a person deprived of any form of control, having been pushed into the present situation, fleeing from a war zone or something close to it, in contradistinction to others such as labor migrants who are seeking opportunities. In practice, as my study will show, the operationalization of need (vulnerability) in asylum policy and practice is complicated and inconsistent (Van Der Waal et al. Reference Van Der Waal, De Koster and Oorschot2013; Reeskens and van der Meer Reference Reeskens and van der Meer2019).

Need and vulnerability are asylum seekers’ main claims to deservingness, as they have not yet contributed and usually do not share identity with majorities in receiving societies or contribute to their security. Early in the MENA migration, asylum seekers from states at war, mainly Syria and Afghanistan, were viewed by many Europeans and governments as needy or vulnerable and so deserving of help. People fleeing from these states were most often granted international protection. But as the numbers of asylum seekers grew and governments lost control over state borders, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between those with ‘legitimate’ asylum claims, that is, meeting the Geneva Convention conditions, and others from “safe” countries who mixed into the migration. The second group were seen as economic migrants who had control over their lives and so were not genuinely in need. Cynicism about the legitimacy of all asylum claims grew. The situation was soon transformed by a series of attacks by Islamic extremists in European cities during 2015 and 2016. Most of those who planned and perpetrated these attacks were European citizens of Mid-Eastern background, not recent migrants or asylum seekers.¹ Nevertheless, the attacks threatened Europeans’ existential security. They drove a rapid reorientation among populations and governments from humanitarian concerns about migrants’ needs to securitizing Europe. European leaders turned to policies of indiscriminate exclusion, militarizing Europe’s land and sea borders to block further entries from the MENA region. By the end of 2016, most migrants, whether they had credible asylum claims or not, were physically excluded from Europe.

The needs of some MENA asylum seekers were, however, still recognized. Britain and other governments established formal programs to sift out and accept very limited numbers of the “most vulnerable,” those recognized as in desperate need of assistance. According to Smith and Waite (Reference Smith and Waite2019, 2289), states “increasingly narrow[ed] the protection space for refugees and redefine[d] ‘the vulnerable’ as an essential marker of asylum policy.” Most states continued to admit unaccompanied child migrants. In terms of nationality, Syrians were most often accepted, as the reality of war and devastation in that country was well known and vivid for Europeans. In sum, “need” continued to qualify as a legitimate criterion for asylum and possibly inclusion, but now it was applied only to a small number. Priority was given to those who had been vetted by the UNHCR in their regions of origin before entering Europe. As Smith and Waite (Reference Smith and Waite2019, 2296–97) explain,

Contribution and Reciprocity

The third basis for deservingness, contribution, or reciprocity is labor migrants’ main claim to inclusion. Reciprocity is generally operationalized as an exchange of labor market participation and tax and social security payments for access to welfare benefits and services (Reeskens and van der Meer Reference Reeskens and van der Meer2019; Nielsen et al. Reference Nielsen, Frederiksen and Albrekt Larsen2020; van Oorschot Reference Oorschot2000). Those with a long and consistent history of work, tax payments, and contributions in a state have earned the right to receive benefits from public budgets and social insurance funds (Gottlieb and Ben Mocha Reference Gottlieb and Mocha2018). Registered labor migrants working in the formal economy, including most intra-EU migrants and a minority of Central Asians (CA) in Russia, should have qualified for inclusion under the reciprocity criterion. In fact, the European Union’s rules promised full inclusion in labor and social rights in receiving states. Some analysts argued that in the EU, the contributory criterion became dominant over the ethnic criterion. According to Vintila and Lafleur (Reference Vintila, Lafleur, Lafluer and Vintila2020, 23), for example, “In most countries and for almost all benefits … nationality becomes an irrelevant factor once the wage-earning criterion is fulfilled. This confirms the trend of employment-driven inclusion of foreign workers in domestic welfare systems … for [EU member states].”

In the event, though, employment-driven inclusion did not fully materialize even within the EU. While intra-EU CEE labor migrants initially enjoyed social and labor rights, many were progressively excluded or included only partially in social benefit systems. Charges were made that they had worked and paid taxes too briefly (Gottlieb and Ben Mocha Reference Gottlieb and Mocha2018). The rationale of ‘insufficient contributions’ was used to challenge labor migrants’ rights, especially to benefits that were paid from the time a migrant began work. The insufficient contribution charge was also used in Russia to exclude labor migrants from the few benefits they could initially access. In both Europe and Russia, it became increasingly difficult for all but highly skilled and educated foreign workers (for whom exceptions were always made) to fulfill the wage-earning criterion for employment-driven inclusion in welfare systems.

Can Outsiders (Still) Become Deserving by Contributing?

While attitudes toward deservingness cannot be adequately captured at a moment in time, the best available indicator is Europeans’ and Russians’ collective responses to the question, “When should immigrants obtain rights to social benefits/services?” Figure 3.1 shows the distribution of responses for the six studied cases in 2016. As the figure shows, majorities in all six states, usually large majorities, most often chose “After they have worked and paid taxes at least a year.” The second most common choice was “Once they have become a citizen.” Only in Sweden did about 20 percent choose “After a year whether or not they have worked” or “Immediately on arrival.” The same survey conducted in 2008 showed very similar results (Greve Reference Greve2019, 145–46).

Figure 3.1 Attitudes toward immigrants’ welfare deservingness in the Russian Federation, Poland, the United Kingdom (Britain), Sweden, Italy, and Germany, 2016

Source: European Social Survey 2021, www.europeansocialsurvey.org/.

These survey results show that large majorities in European societies did not accept normatively the EU’s rule that benefits to labor migrants should be provided “immediately on arrival.” Opposition to paying social benefits to CEE labor migrants as soon as they began work was a major issue of contention in welfare nationalist politics. Critics demanded delays of one or more years with continuous work before benefit eligibility. Effectively, migrants were required to register their employment and pay taxes and social insurance in the formal economy. Most labor migrants worked, but casualization of labor markets made it increasingly difficult for many to retain long-term formal sector jobs that were connected with the tax and social insurance systems. Many entered EU labor markets through employment agencies that offered only short-term contracts. Especially after layoffs in 2008, large numbers turned to part-time jobs or self-employment that made it difficult to register jobs or accumulate insurance contributions. In Russia, most CA labor migrants were confined to the informal sector and had little prospect of qualifying for inclusion. While the most skilled, entrepreneurial, and racially closest often managed to establish formal employment records, permanent residence, and even citizenship, the majority had little prospect of meeting the contribution criterion.

Security

The fourth criterion for deservingness, the security effects of migration, has received much less attention in the migration literature but is essential to the analysis here. Migration is intrinsically linked to national security concerns (Adamson Reference Adamson2006). The foreign and domestic political associations of immigrants have always mattered for receiving states and societies. Real or anticipated threats may weigh heavily in decisions about inclusion and exclusion. The US’ incarceration of ethnically Japanese residents during WWII, whether or not they were American citizens, is an obvious example. In their study on the politics of citizenship in postwar Japan, Kalicki, Murakami and Fraser (Reference Kalicki, Murakami and Fraser2013)² found that security concerns played the predominant role in driving exclusionary policies toward most post-colonials, specifically Taiwanese and the large population of Koreans who resided in Japan at the war’s end. While Kalicki et al. (Reference Kalicki, Murakami and Fraser2013, 228) recognized some role for ethnic differences, they emphasized a broadly /perceived/ security threat, “Koreans’ involvement in communist activities, their illegal (re-)entries to Japan, and their criminal behavior /also attributed to Taiwanese/ all contributed to an apparent threat to the stability of a new Japanese sociopolitical order.” By contrast, the Ryukyuans (originating from the Okinawan islands, which were controlled by the US in this period) also ethnically non-Japanese, were granted citizenship in postwar Japan.³ The authors’ work confirms that security considerations play a large role, are sometimes even decisive in explaining the exclusion and inclusion of outsiders, independently of ethnicity.

The main significance of the security dimensions for my study is in helping to explain the most extreme cases: exclusion of MENA asylum seekers and inclusion of Ukrainian refugees in Europe. MENA asylum seekers were excluded in part because of their perceived association with Islamic terrorism. Refugees from Ukraine were included in part because their country was fighting a common enemy. Security considerations mattered less in the other cases. Crime and other types of internal violence constitute domestic security concerns and so make some types of migrants – women, children, families – more acceptable than others, especially young men. Compatriot re-settlers contribute to economic and demographic security, making countries less dependent on foreign workers. But security is a secondary factor in most migrations; only when it involves credible threats of violence at the national level does it become decisive. In these cases, it accounts for the most dramatic migration policies – that rapid switch toward securitization against MENA migrants in 2015, Europe’s first-ever use of immediate collective protection and inclusion guarantees for Ukrainian citizens in March, 2022.

A Note on Universal Human Rights

Many people consider that a universal human right to fulfillment of basic needs confers deservingness. Universalism does not differentiate between us and them and does not recognize boundaries of community or ethnicity. In the words of Nielsen et al. (Reference Nielsen, Frederiksen and Albrekt Larsen2020, 123), “The moral logic of universalism breaks down the connections between citizenship, nation, and social rights entrenched in the identity logic of deservingness.” Commitments to universalism by human rights advocates, many international and nongovernmental organizations, Green Parties, churches, some academics, and citizens are unconditional, including all asylum seekers and other migrants. The United Nations is the major international promoter of universal rights, through international conventions including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCHR 1989) and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (UNHCR 1990) and others. States make voluntary commitments to these conventions, but, as already noted, there are no enforcement mechanisms. National constitutions and laws may also promise limited universal social rights to those present on a state’s territory.

As a practical matter, European states and Russia generally provide emergency medical care for all, as well as public education and some additional benefits for children ages 7–16 who are present on their territories, regardless of family legal status. (It should be noted, however, that migrants without legal status may avoid accessing these services because they fear exposure.) Within Europe’s political establishments Green Parties have served as the main advocates for treating migrants and asylum seekers on the basis of universal human needs. Overall, though, Greens have been too small to have a significant influence on immigration policy. People and civil society organizations in all receiving states who are committed to universal rights have continued to provide for refugees and rescue them from likely drowning in the Mediterranean and other hazards. Some governments, most notoriously Italy’s under former interior minister Matteo Salvini and Poland’s under the Law and Justice Party, have tried to stop and even criminalize citizens’ efforts to help migrants. Beyond these citizens’ laudable but small-scale efforts, universal human rights have had little influence on policies or practices in my cases.

Opposing Immigration

Anti-immigrant ideologies and policies were central to the rise of populist parties in Europe. With the exception of Britain’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), however, in the countries studied here these parties did not emerge in response to immigration, nor was it a central issue for most in their early years. Rather, they were initially anti-establishment, nationalist, nativist, and sometimes xenophobic. Some had roots in extreme right, neo-Nazi or neo-fascist movements that kept them marginalized within national party systems. They concentrated on the immigration issue only when its political salience rose after 2004 in Britain and 2011 in all European cases, becoming ethnic entrepreneurs in response to the CEE and MENA migrations and thereby greatly expanding their popular appeal. The parties’ nationalist and xenophobic identity politics segued easily to anti-immigrant positions. The resulting “politicisation of the [migration] crisis by populist. parties clearly contributed to the framing of immigration in ethnopluralist and security terms” (Pirro, Taggart, and van Kessel Reference Pirro, Taggart and van Kessel2018, 4). Populists blamed immigrants for a host of cultural, economic, security, and existential threats and demanded that their entry be restricted or stopped. In sum, the MENA migration gave established but marginal populist parties opportunities to mobilize electoral support and increase their influence and political power.

Euroskepticism

Criticism of the EU is a leitmotif of populist parties, but they are Euroskeptic to varying degrees (Pirro and van Kessel Reference Pirro and Kessel2017; Pirro, Taggart, and van Kessel Reference Pirro, Taggart and van Kessel2018). Their policy positions have ranged from rejection of the Euro currency in Germany and Italy to advocacy of withdrawal from the EU in Britain and Sweden. The EU is heavily implicated in national elites’ declining legitimacy. European populists represent national and EU elites as colluding against “the people,” or national elites as subordinating policymaking and sovereignty to EU officials in Brussels. Economically, populists have targeted the EU’s budget deficit caps, stringent financial controls, and broadly liberal economic prescriptions. Lendvai and Stubbs (Reference Lendvai and Stubbs2015, 453), in an article criticizing austerity policies, argue that the EU has “marginalize[d] discourses around ‘social inclusion’ in favour of ‘social investment’ … tight fiscal policies, capping of social expenditures, and a shift away from ‘passive’ protection to ‘activation’ and ‘investment.’” States’ entry into the Euro zone depoliticized national economic policymaking, denying governments the autonomy to ease economic pressures with Keynesian counter-cyclical deficit spending. Populists also targeted the policy of “free movement of labor” among member states as a threat to EU15 workers’ living standards. In 2015, at the height of the MENA migration, populists condemned the EU’s efforts to disperse migrants among members as “an attempt … to force even more immigration and multiculturalism upon its member states” (Pirro, Taggart, and van Kessel Reference Pirro, Taggart and van Kessel2018).

Economic Grievances

Populists also focused on the economic grievances that were undermining support for established parties and increasing cynicism among voters (Liu Reference Liu2015).⁴ Populists used this cynicism to rally support well in advance of the migrations. Some of the parties studied here emerged in response to socio-economic issues and grievances, opposing welfare cuts and austerity measures. While populists are consistently anti-establishment and nationalistic, they may be right or left in economic and other policy doctrines. All occupied right, sometimes extreme right, positions on issues of identity, culture, and immigration. All were welfare nationalist, demanding that social resources be provided only to nationals, with outsiders excluded. They diverged between left and right on issues of welfare and redistribution within their domestic socio-economies.

These four stances – anti-establishment, anti-EU, anti-immigrant, and welfare nationalist – constitute the core of populists’ appeals. The case studies below explain how populist parties in the book’s five European cases used them. My study confirms that ethno-nationalist politics and related anti-immigrant stances are the primary sources of populists’ appeal. However, Euroskepticism, welfare nationalism, and in some cases left positions on domestic re-distribution have followed close behind in attracting voters (Krause and Giebler Reference Krause and Giebler2020; Enggist and Pinggera Reference Enggist and Pinggera2022; Meardi and Guardiancich Reference Meardi and Guardiancich2022). Don Kalb explains the connection between nationalism and left, pro-welfare policies domestically in “The Neo-nationalist Ascendancy” (2021, 5, 9), “Neo‐nationalist political claims often demand social protection and recognition for majority national working classes. … Quite a few of them have an anti‐neoliberal feel. … The abandonment of a solidary politics of class in the 1980s–2000s produced new presences of class within a counter politics of the ethno‐nation.”

Who Votes for Populists?

Electorates of populist parties are far from uniform but broadly share some social and economic characteristics across Europe. “Prototypical” supporters tend to be male, working class, with low or medium education, socioeconomically disadvantaged (i.e., low wage earners or unemployed), and in some cases with actual or subjectively reported poor health (Spruyt, Keppens and Van Droogenbroeck Reference Spruyt, Keppens and Van Droogenbroeck2016; Rathgeb and Busemeyer Reference Rathgeb and Busemeyer2022). These patterns have been shown in studies of voters across European countries, including Germany (Frankland Reference Frankland2020) and Sweden (Martinsson Reference Martinsson2018). Such voters are often categorized as “left-behinds” or “losers of globalization,” those with relatively few resources who have lost status and economic security in the processes of technological revolution and cultural diversification. Researchers have found that negative socio-economic expectations and grievances as well as perceived ethnic threat and especially negative attitudes toward immigration are key determinants of voting for populists (Inglehart and Norris Reference Inglehart and Norris2016; Berning Reference Berning2017).

Populist parties often mobilize large numbers of voters who have not previously participated in elections or have become inactive, usually because of disillusionment with existing parties – the conviction that those parties do not, or no longer, represent the voter’s interests. Populists may draw from disillusioned voters on both the left and the right of party spectrums. Zagórski, Rama, and Cordero (Reference Zagórski, Rama and Cordero2021), for example, found that young people in temporary and precarious jobs who had not been politically engaged are overrepresented among populist voters across seventeen European electorates. While young workers tend to be better-educated and skilled than the “prototypical” populist voter, they have been affected by the deterioration of labor markets. Zagórski et al. (2021, 406) conclude, “these results suggest that the employment insecurity of a segment of the population that has habitually not been very active in electoral contests, such as young people, … could explain the success of parties which develop populist and nationalist discourses.”

Populist voter profiles are also to some degree context-specific and vary across European countries. The parties in some cases attract middle-class voters and pick up on generalized discontent in electorates. There is evidence that some middle-class voters support populists because of rising inequality and the threat of downward mobility. According to Engler and Weisstanner (Reference Engler and Weisstanner2021, 1), “voters higher up in the social hierarchy may turn to the radical right to defend existing social boundaries.” The Italian case will show that as populist parties gain support, their electorates may broaden socially. When M5S’s base grew to one-third of the national electorate, its voters were “drawn from across classes, age groups and other social categories in a way that makes its profile quite similar to that of the Italian population as a whole” (Natale Reference Natale2014, 28). However varied Europe’s populist electorates, their motivations remain broadly consistent: alienation from national political and EU elites; grievances about economic insecurity, and especially opposition to high levels of immigration.

Populist Parties and Their Influence on Anti-immigrant Politics

A key question for my analysis is how much populists have influenced mainstream politics, that is, whether and how they have changed centrist parties’ political discourses and policies on immigration and welfare nationalism. Faced with serious populist challenges, mainstream parties have three possible strategies for responding:

1. 1) oppose such challengers, allowing them to dominate the anti-migration policy space and risk replacement;

2. 2) move toward the populists’ rhetoric and co-opt their policies selectively in an effort to undermine their competitiveness; or

3. 3) adopt populists’ platforms wholesale and push them out of electoral competition.

The book’s five European cases represent all three of these strategies. In Italy and Poland, populist parties replaced their mainstream competitors and formed governments during the MENA migration. In Germany and Sweden, populists gained significant representation in national legislatures but did not enter governing coalitions. They nevertheless pressed governing parties in both states, which were initially the most welcoming to MENA migrants. These governing parties coopted some populist positions that radically changed the national discourse and shifted immigration policies in restrictive and exclusivist directions. In Britain, the Conservative Party adopted and implemented the major platform of its populist challenger UKIP – that Britain leave the EU, ending free entry for CEE labor migrants and leading to UKIP’s rapid demise.

The case studies below introduce the major populist parties in each of the five European cases: Alternative for Germany (AfD); the Sweden Democrats (SwD;) Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S) and League; Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS); and Britain’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Cases are ordered according to the increasing extent of populists’ success in each nation’s politics: first Germany and Sweden, then Italy and Poland, and finally, Britain. Figure 3.2 shows the upward electoral trajectory for each party in national elections from 2002 to 2018. All gained vote shares to a greater or lesser extent after 2010 and all except UKIP remained in electoral contention. Figure 3.3 shows the favorability rankings of populist parties in comparison with mainstream parties in 2019.

Figure 3.2 Vote share of main populist parties in national elections, the United Kingdom (Britain), Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Poland, 2002–2019

Source: Klaus Armingeon et al. 2020. Comparative Political Data Set 1960–2018. Zurich: Institute of Political Science www.cpds-data.org/index.php/data.

The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)

The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) might be considered either the most or least successful of Europe’s populist parties. Its major goal, taking Britain out of the EU, was adopted and implemented by the governing Conservatives, with the result of marginalizing UKIP. The party emerged in 2009, replacing the British Nationalist Party and continuing its campaign against intra-EU migration from CEE states. Led by the colorful Nigel Farage, UKIP tapped into popular hostility to Britain’s governing parties and economic discontents as well as anti-immigrant sentiments. Its primary demand was that the government end uncontrolled labor migration to Britain. Strongly welfare nationalist and Euroskeptic, UKIP focused on exaggerated claims about migrants’ abuse of British social services as well as Britain’s subsidies to the EU. The party rose rapidly in public opinion polls and in elections to the European Parliament. In Britain’s 2015 national election, UKIP won more than 12 percent of the national vote (see Figure 3.2), though in Britain’s single-member district (SMD) electoral system, it netted only a single seat in parliament. Still, UKIP’s performance in sub-national elections was sufficient to push the major parties into responding to its agenda.

By 2013, all three of Britain’s major parties, Conservatives, Labor, and Liberal Democrats, had adopted major parts of UKIP’s platform, promising to limit migration from CEE states as well as EU migrants’ social rights. By 2015, the government had passed a series of restrictive reforms that were designed to discourage immigration. Numbers of intra-EU labor migrants continued to rise, however, with the entry of many thousands from the two new post-2007 EU members, Bulgaria and Romania as well as increases from the Southern-tier EU states that were affected by the Eurozone crisis (see Figure 5.2). Britain’s government was squeezed between UKIP’s anti-immigrant political mobilization on the one hand, and the EU’s intransigence on “free movement of labor” and equality of social rights for EU citizens on the other.

UKIP’s electoral appeals were populist, xenophobic, and welfare-nationalist. Farage condemned the EU leadership as distant bureaucrats who betrayed the interests of the people and Britain’s political elite for complicity in that betrayal as well as forfeiture of national sovereignty. Most of the party’s rhetoric was directed against CEE labor migrants, whom Farage condemned as “welfare tourists,” calculating, exploitative, and in some cases diseased. UKIP demanded multiple years of work in Britain before EU labor migrants could register for social benefits. It is notable that Britain was the only country in Europe where the CEE migration produced a major populist response, though at later points, populist parties in Sweden, Germany, and Italy that had mobilized against the MENA migration raised similar demands to limit CEE migrants’ rights.

In response to growing pressure, the governing Conservatives called the Brexit referendum in 2016 and a majority voted for Britain to leave the EU. According to Pirro, Taggart and van Kessel (Reference Pirro, Taggart and van Kessel2018, 384).

After the Brexit vote, Conservative Party “Brexiteers” occupied key positions within the party organisation as well as the government. … The presence of UKIP plainly contributed to the calling of the referendum on Brexit and significantly altered the Conservative Party’s trajectory on Europe. In UKIP’s discourse, moreover, the migrant crisis provided additional reasons as to why the country should leave the EU and regain control over its borders. UKIP’s Euroscepticism placed socioeconomic issues and immigration at the centre of attention for British politics. Against this backdrop, the impact of UKIP’s Euroscepticism has been enormous … and has played a key role in reconfiguring the dynamics of British party politics.

The governing parties having stolen its thunder, Farage’s party collapsed in 2017 (see Figure 3.2) In the event Cameron’s government did not expel most CEE migrants from Britain, though Brexit stopped more from coming.

Figure 3.3 shows the favorability rankings of the six parties (along with one additional Polish party, Kuzik’ 15) in 2019, just after the MENA migration had been brought under control. Rankings are based on the Global Attitude Survey and show populists in comparison with major mainstream parties in each case – strong in Italy and Poland, much weaker but significant in Sweden and Germany. Though it no longer mattered electorally, UKIP continued to get endorsements from almost one-quarter of Britain’s population as the Brexit process dragged on under the leadership of Boris Johnson, accounting for its ranking here.

Figure 3.3 Favorability rankings of major European parties, 2019 (populists compared with mainstream parties)

Note: Kuliz’15 has a marginal presence in national politics.

Source: Spring 2019 Global Attitudes Survey. European Parliament, September 2019. Pew Research Center, www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/14/political-parties/.

Populist Parties’ Divergent Social Policies

While migration policy is the core issue for populist parties and their voters, there has been growing attention among scholars to European populists’ social policies. Here my cases illustrate a dichotomy. All six parties are welfare-nationalist, that is, advocating that social benefits should be provided to nationals only, that migrants and other outsiders should be excluded. Three – AfD, League, and UKIP – are right or pro-market in domestic social policies. The other three – M5S, the Sweden Democrats, and PiS – are left-leaning on social policy, favoring more egalitarian redistribution within their domestic economies, including anti-poverty policies, higher pensions, family benefits, etc. In government, PiS and M5S have in fact pursued redistributive policies. PiS has done so successfully in Poland. M5S promoted, but failed to implement, its flagship universal basic income plan after Italy’s 2017 election. There is evidence that populists have influenced some mainstream parties’ welfare as well as migration policies. Studying the impact of European populist parties “beyond migration politics” in eighteen European countries post-1985, Krause and Giebler (Reference Krause and Giebler2020) found that especially left-leaning mainstream parties react to populists’ success not only by changing their socio-cultural policy but also by advocating more pro-welfare domestic economic policies.⁶

Some scholars take issue with the characterization of populists’ social policies as “pro-welfare” or “left” in the traditional sense (Meardi and Guardiancich Reference Meardi and Guardiancich2022; Rathgeb and Busemeyer Reference Rathgeb and Busemeyer2022).⁷ Rathgeb and Busemeyer (Reference Rathgeb and Busemeyer2022) argue that populist parties and their constituents support a “particularistic-authoritarian welfare state” that provides for the “deserving” who have earned work-related benefits, for example, higher pensions and other benefits privileging older blue-collar workers. Populist parties, these authors argue, support family policies that aim at re-traditionalizing women’s roles rather than supporting gender equality. My cases show that these claims sometimes fit populist welfare programs and sometimes do not. Italian populists’ pension policies do favor older workers, but M5S’s universal basic income proposal is neither re-traditionalizing nor work-related; it is broadly viewed as a progressive policy adapted to the casualization of labor. The Sweden Democrats call for expansion of the universalist social-democratic welfare state, in which women’s labor force participation is high and which is generally viewed as progressive. PiS’s major policy does fit the re-traditionalizing model. Its program of family benefits is explicitly pro-natalist and neo-familialist, though it is also effectively anti-poverty. By contrast, PiS’ labor policies have been directed at improving conditions for young workers through greater state regulation of labor markets and benefit provision. In sum, populist welfare programs do not fit a narrow model; they vary across parties and national contexts, and may attract political support from various sectors of electorates. Though less important that anti-immigrant positions, social policy issues have played important roles in the electoral success of parties.

What Motivates Anti-immigrant Politics in Russia?

In the Russian Federation (as in Europe), anti-migrant and welfare nationalist politics developed in response to mass labor immigration, mostly from Central Asia. Popular hostility toward the predominantly Muslim labor migrants grew, especially in large cities and regions with high concentrations of migrants (Gorodzeisky, Glikman and Maskileyson Reference Gorodzeisky, Glikman and Maskileyson2015; Bessudnov Reference Bessudnov2016; Schenk Reference Schenk2018). As in Europe, migrants are seen as both cultural and economic threats (Bahry Reference Bahry2016). They have been blamed for taking jobs, bringing crime and disease, burdening schools with non-native-speaking children, and otherwise damaging quality of life for Russian citizens. According to Caress Schenk, author of Why Control Migration? (2018, 28), an authoritative study of Russian migration policy: “In many ways the discourses that surround immigration issues in Russia are typical of the myths popular in migrant-receiving countries, focusing on unemployment, security threats and cultural incompatibilities. … In recent years those myths have become increasingly mobilized in Russia … and have. become a regular part of election-year rhetoric.”

Local and regional (sub-national) officials – mayors and governors – in Russia have responded to popular anti-immigrant sentiments (Kingsbury Reference Kingsbury, Pikulicka-Wilczewska and Uehling2017; Abashin Reference Abashin, Heusala and Aitamurto2017; Buckley Reference Buckley2018). Welfare nationalist rhetoric and advocacy of exclusionary policies provide ways for these politicians to build support and authority and showcase their effectiveness in addressing social grievances. They also have to mobilize voters’ participation even in staged national elections. In some cases, they need voters’ support in genuinely competitive elections in cities and in regions for a period after 2012 when gubernatorial elections were re-instated. Governors and mayors in Russia’s electoral-authoritarian system have to demonstrate their effectiveness to both the center and the public. For the center, they must maintain social stability and deliver votes to the president, in order to keep their jobs. To demonstrate their effectiveness to the public, they must address (or find scapegoats for) social problems and discontents, and may further mobilize discontents in order to increase the visibility of their activities and power.

Anti-immigrant claims, scapegoating, and demands for exclusionary policies have been prominently articulated by leaders of major cities, including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov (1992–2010) and Ekaterinburg mayor Evgenii Roizman (2013–2018). When Roizman faced a competitive mayoral election in 2013, his use of anti-migrant rhetoric to mobilize voters helped him to win against the Putin-aligned United Russia’s candidate (Coalson Reference Coalson2013). Luzhkov’s successor, Sergei Sobyanin (2010–present), was a xenophobe who placed migration at the center of the capital’s politics. These and other sub-national politicians behaved as ethnic entrepreneurs both in elections and in establishing their governance authority (see Chapter 4). According to Schenk (Reference Schenk2018, 199), “the efforts of the regional government to use populist anti-migrant rhetoric to appeal to the public are an important part of constructing a sense of regional stability.”

Why and How Much Does the Autocrat Respond?

Policy-making is extremely centralized in Russia’s Presidential Administration. One of Putin’s key policies has been to maintain the visa-free regime with Central Asian states, in order to provide labor for the domestic economy and to expand Russia’s influence in the CA region. It is the open-border regime that allows a large and uncontrolled inflow of labor migrants to Russia. Citizens and sub-national elites have demanded that the national government restrict migrants’ entry, minimize their rights to social services, and limit access to labor markets, demands that parallel those of European citizens. Economic pressures resulting from the 2008 crisis and the economic downturn that began in Russia in 2012 contributed to ramping up anti-immigrant discourses. In public opinion surveys, growing numbers of respondents endorsed the slogan “Russia for [ethnic] Russians.” Almost every party in Russia’s admittedly rubber-stamp legislature called for restrictions on immigration. However, as the well-known scholar of authoritarian politics Jennifer Gandhi (Reference Gandhi2008, 187) argues, “Because authoritarian /legislative and other/ institutions have no means by which to challenge /executives/, in the end, they do not constrain autocrats in the same way that institutions constrain democratic rulers.” In short authoritarian incumbents can simply refuse to concede to popular grievances. Why then, as Mary Buckley (Reference Buckley2018,) observed, did anti-immigrant hostilities in authoritarian Russia have “an impact on the changing course of migration policy?”

Despite their autonomy, autocrats are interested in societal attitudes and respond to mass grievances. There is abundant evidence that they pay attention to public opinion, election results, and other sources of information about their societies in efforts to extend the survival of their regimes, minimize instability, and limit reliance on overt coercion (Gandhi and Przeworski Reference Gandhi and Przeworski2007; Gandhi Reference Gandhi2008; Gandhi and Lust-Okar Reference Gandhi and Lust-Okar2009; Malesky and Schuler Reference Malesky and Schuler2010; Miller Reference Miller2015; Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2022). With respect to elections and policy choice specifically, Miller’s (Reference Miller2015, 691) cross-country analysis found that “even when threat of turnover is low, autocratic elections influence policy by allowing citizens to signal dissatisfaction with the regime, ruling parties use this information to calibrate policy concessions.” By responding selectively to mass grievances, autocrats can reduce the likelihood of large protests and violent social conflicts, such as those that broke out periodically between nationals and CA migrants in Russian cities. They can co-opt challengers and appear somewhat responsive to their societies.

The institutionalist literature on authoritarianism (Gandhi Reference Gandhi2008 Malesky and Shuler Reference Malesky and Schuler2010) also argues that even weak parties and legislatures may play an important role in maintaining these regimes. Authoritarian systems are information-poor (Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2014, Reference Dimitrov2022). Central leaders may know little about popular discontents. According to Gandhi again (2008, 181), “Legislatures and regime parties serve as a controlled institutionalized channel through which outside groups can make their demands and incumbents can make concessions without appearing to cave into popular protest.” They involve more voices in policy. Parties in authoritarian regimes do not represent societal interests, nor are they accountable to their electorates. Legislatures do not determine policy outcomes, as they do in democratic polities. But when they have unified policy preferences, as Russia’s legislative parties did have on migration issues by 2011, they are more likely to influence the executive’s policies.

My research shows that sub-national and other elites did impact federal policy toward migration in Russia, getting modest concessions from Putin that drove policy in welfare nationalist and exclusivist directions. But Putin made no concessions on the most significant demands, refusing to end the visa-free regime or take serious steps to limit immigration, because these demands contradicted other political and economic goals to which he gave priority. In sum, the impacts of anti-immigrant and welfare nationalist pressures in Russia were not nearly as effective in changing national policies as in the European democratic cases. Western leaders had to actually restrict migration or be replaced by challengers who would. Putin was more insulated. Still, the policy inputs of xenophobia and anti-migrant demands in Russia can be clearly linked to the adoption of restrictive and exclusivist policy changes.

While there are many differences in European and Russian migration politics that will be clarified in the case studies, some similarities are striking. The populations’ impulses to “keep what is ours,” to defend declining resources in response to newcomers, are similar. Anti-immigrant elites’ use of xenophobic rhetoric, exaggerated claims of social costs and threats, and even, as later chapters will show, specific charges against migrants as “health tourists” and “birth tourists” resonate across the cases. The shared choice of marginal political parties in Europe and lower-level officials in Russia to foreground anti-immigrant politics in order to advance their positions is interesting. Shared long-term structural trends go a long way toward explaining similar reactions at societal levels. Similar responses of lower-level politicians illustrate incentives in both types of polities to respond to and exploit popular grievances and to scapegoat the most vulnerable groups in their societies.