For some time, there has been a debate among academics on the consequences of multiculturalism in welfare states, where some question if the two are possible to combine. For my own part, I have not seen any evidence that there would be any fundamental problem with uniting them. Now, a new paper by Koopmans is taking this topic on and presenting a new take on this, arguing that there is a problem (thanks to Integrationsbloggen for bringing it to my attention). Essentially, the paper argues that having generous welfare states with highly tolerant multicultural policies result in segregation and is a quantitative study comparing results in eight European countries. This is, to some extent, controversial, since it implies that states should either have highly assimilatory policies or generous welfare state to succeed with immigrant integration, but not both.
There are several issues with this paper. First of all, its categorization of multicultural policies leave much to be wished for, including all sorts of policies that might not have a great impact on labour market positioning (arguably the most important single dimension for integration). For instance, the accessibility of citizenship status can have very limited significance for achieving a job in countries where permanent residence is sufficient for been allowed to work.
A second weakness is the discussion on labour market participation. Koopmans only discusses participation as such. There is thus no discussion at all with regards to potential under-employment and other segregation effects within the labour market which might result from discrimination. So, even if more assimilatory policies might be efficient in forcing immigrants into some kind of job, we cannot tell anything about what types of jobs they will get from this study, meaning that it is quite possible that they are to be found on the lowest rung of the labour market ladder. If this is found to be true, we would have good reason to doubt to what extent integration has actually been achieved (as opposed to assimilation).
Thirdly, the study bases its conceptualization on Esping Andersen's typology of welfare state, but this typology is not without its problems. For instance, it is mostly based on how clients qualify for welfare transfers, which says very little about the efficiency of the active labour market policy in the respective country.
Finally, it is remarkable to see the absence of immigrant agency in the paper's theoritization. There is a whole set of assumptions made about how immigrants will supposedly act in response to generous welfare transfers, for instance, that they will be quite content living on social assistance because it is ostensibly much better than the economic situation in their old country. It seems to me that little of this is substantiated.
Thus, I can't say that I am convinced by the presented argument. It makes a lot of assumptions about a causality it cannot conclusively prove, simply because it has under-theorized what mechanisms actually lie behind integration (as opposed to assimiliation), particularly when it comes to entry into the labour market. For instance, it might be that the nations in the study that shows the lowest labour market participation rates simply have the strongest discriminatory social currents, but we wouldn't know, because this issue has not been sufficiently engaged in the paper. This also demonstrates the limited utility of quantative studies for an issue that is inherently qualitative in nature: statistics can only take us so far, it takes qualitative methods to expose the highly complex processes that goes on behind the numbers.
