Eligibility and take up of social assistance for immigrants and nationals: the case of Luxembourg?

Welfare states have developed within nation-states and were initially aimed at their own citizens. Migrants, however, are also included in Bismarckian insurances due to the link between work contract and insurances. With this in mind, then, what happens with non-contributory benefits such as social assistance? In this paper we tackle Luxembourg’s social assistance, the Revenu Minimum Garanti (RMG). The legal framework of this benefit contains a residence condition which excluded all migrants and still excludes non-EU migrants. By differentiating immigrants via their educational level and migration status (EU or non-EU) and nationals via their educational level (for both groups being more or less than a BA/BSc), we can demonstrate in a more contrastive way the “eligibility” and the “take-up” versus “non-take-up” of the RMG by the different groups. Given Luxembourg’s strong highly qualified immigration, comparing just “immigrants” with “nationals”, presupposing hence two homogeneous groups, would not have been appropriate. We used one wave of the PSELL 3/EU-SILC household panel and discovered a relationship between eligibility and migration status only for the less qualified immigrants and nationals with a very high eligibility for non-EU migrants, but an extremely small eligibility for highly qualified nationals and migrants. According to the regression analysis of take-up, there is no significant difference between nationals and immigrants for the less qualified. Hence we conclude that there is little consumption by the most vulnerable.