Abstract
Due to the large influx of immigrants into European welfare states over the past few decades, welfare chauvinism has become a popular way to express anti-immigrant attitudes.
Welfare chauvinists demand priority for natives over immigrants in access to welfare services.
As their arguments go, immigrants lack a contribution history to the welfare state, and they do not share a group identity with natives.
Empirical evidence on welfare chauvinism comes from survey-based studies, entailing limitations in mapping its mechanisms.
To fill this gap, we present the results of a pie--sharing game that enrolled natives of and immigrants to the U.K..
We varied which party was attributed with creating the pie and whether partners shared group identity.
Subjects made distributive choices and stated their beliefs about the fair division.
In choices and beliefs, we found evidence for self--serving invocation of contribution history among natives and immigrants, indicating role—-dependent and opportunistic distributive preferences and fairness beliefs.
Natives' and immigrants' choices were uninfluenced by their partner's group identity, but this was not so for fairness beliefs.
While natives' beliefs were uninfluenced by their partner's group identity, immigrants believed their fair share was lower when paired with an outgroup versus ingroup partner.