said that this is easier to come by if the person in need shares similar “primordial”
Intriguingly, much of this literature highlights the American experience with
diversity combined with a mainstream media that “racializes” images of poverty and of
African Americans as illegitimate receivers of welfare benefits as the main reasons why
America has failed to develop a more complete welfare state (Gilens 1999; Alesina and
Glaeser 2004). Those who do apply the American experience to the European context,
typically end with dire proclamations such as this one from one of the keenest observers
of matters of race, ethnicity and the American welfare state, Nathan Glazer (1998, 17):
“…what will happen to European social benefits as they are seen to go disproportionately
to immigrants... and to fellow citizens different in religion and race [?] … One may well
see a withdrawal in European countries from the most advanced frontier of social
policy…because these are seen as programs for ‘others’”.
The purpose of this essay is to examine the validity of this extrapolation from the
American to the European context and to probe whether such an “Americanization of the
European welfare state” is indeed occurring as a result of immigration induced diversity.
This is a complex question and requires the examination of three streams of literatures
that are rarely linked with each other: the literature on the welfare state, on immigration
and on interpersonal trust. First, the welfare state and immigration are said to be
connected through the primordial argument introduced above which is embodied in the
classic phrase by T.H. Marshall (1950, 24) who averred that the foundation of citizenship
1
Such “primordial” arguments are enjoying an unexpected comeback. For the general validity of these
arguments and why they are arising now, see Crepaz (forthcoming, The University of Michigan Press).
Brian Barry, who rarely left one guessing where he stood exactly dealt with the “primordial” argument as
follows: “The wiseacres who say that there is something ‘natural’ or ‘primordial’ about these forces merely
reveal their historical and sociological illiteracy. It was said of the Bourbons when they were restored to the
throne in France in 1815 that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The same may be said of
those who pursue policies of ethnocultural nationalism and particularism, and also of those who lend them
intellectual support” (Barry, 2001, 4).
Convention