“These benefits are ours because we were here first”: relating autochthony to welfare chauvinism and welfare ethnocentrism

Abstract

A substantial portion of Europeans opposes granting welfare benefits to immigrants (welfare chauvinism) and to longer-established ethnic minorities (welfare ethnocentrism). We aim to explain welfare chauvinism and welfare ethnocentrism by introducing autochthony as a novel determinant. Autochthony is the general belief in entitlements for firstcomers. Using a representative sample of British (N = 3,516) and Dutch (N = 1,241) natives, we find that autochthony indeed predicts higher welfare chauvinism, even after taking into account a great range of existing explanations. Moreover, an experiment among British natives showed that autochthony not only explains welfare chauvinism towards immigrants but also welfare ethnocentrism towards established ethnic minorities and Muslims. However, autochthony did not explain welfare ethnocentrism towards black Britons. Our findings indicate that the argument “we were here first” can help to shed light on welfare attitudes that are of growing importance in diverse Western societies.