In her talk Kris-Stella Trump explores how migrants tend to be perceived as less deserving than native-born citizens when it comes to welfare state benefits. The difference in attitudes toward otherwise similar native-born citizens and migrants has been termed the migrant deservingness gap. This paper explores whether the deservingness gap can be closed by running survey experiments in the relatively unique American context, in which it is possible to vary migrant status without varying ethnicity. The first experiment shows that, even after ethnicity is held constant, hard-working recently arrived migrants are seen as less deserving than Americans. The second experiment explores whether signaling intent to stay long term mitigates the gap; it does, but only partially. The paper concludes that the migrant deservingness can be meaningfully reduced – but not eliminated – by signaling a strong work ethic and intent to stay long term.
