PhD: ‘How Welfare States Create and Reinforce Social Deficits of Migrants’

Are you interested in welfare states and how they impact the shadow side of migrants’ social networks? Then apply for this PhD position!

Migrants’ social networks are often understood as important sources of support and are often researched as protective safety nets alongside formal welfare-state institutions. 

Your job

This PhD project takes a different perspective. It starts from the idea that social networks can be supportive and, at the same time, generate social deficits: pressures, stigma, and misinformation (Offer 2021) that may undermine migrants’ economic prospects. Welfare states can play an important role by providing formal protection (Koning 2021), thus decreasing migrants’ dependency on social networks that produce social deficits (Bilecen & Barglowski 2015). Yet, little is known about the relationship between welfare states and social deficits. This project therefore asks: under what welfare-state conditions do migrants’ social netw...