The welfare state can be perceived as a safety net which helps individuals adjust to situations of risk or transition. Starting from this idea of the welfare state as safety net, this study addresses whether and how welfare generosity may influence people’s willingness to migrate. In doing so, we distinguish between two potential mechanisms, innovatively focusing on welfare provisions in both the country of origin and destination. First, a generous welfare system in the country of origin may have a retaining impact, as individuals may be unwilling to migrate to countries offering less social protection. Second, generous welfare provisions in the country of destination may enable migration for individuals who are more intolerant of uncertainty and who otherwise would prefer to remain immobile. We test both mechanisms using stated preference data collected with a unique experimental design among over 300 Dutch Master students. Confirming the first mechanism, we indeed find that respondents report a lower willingness to migrate when evaluating hypothetical scenarios where the level of social protection was higher in the country of origin as compared with the country of destination. Furthermore, and in line with the second mechanism, individuals who are more intolerant of uncertainty generally report a lower willingness to migrate, yet their willingness to migrate increases for scenarios with higher levels of unemployment benefits. Our findings, thus, indeed suggest that welfare arrangements are mainly serving a safety net function and need to be understood in relative terms between the country of origin and destination.

福利国家可以被视为帮助个人适应风险或过渡情况的安全网。本研究从福利国家作为安全网的观点出发，探讨福利慷慨是否以及如何影响人们的迁移意愿。在此过程中，我们区分了两种潜在机制，创新地关注来源国和目的地国的福利规定。首先，原籍国慷慨的福利制度可能会产生持续影响，因为个人可能不愿意迁移到社会保护较少的国家。其次，目的地国慷慨的福利规定可能使那些更不能容忍不确定性并且更愿意保持不动的人能够迁移。我们使用在 300 多名荷兰硕士生中通过独特的实验设计收集的陈述偏好数据来测试这两种机制。确认第一个机制，我们确实发现受访者在评估原籍国社会保护水平高于目的地国的假设情景时报告的移民意愿较低。此外，与第二种机制一致，更不能容忍不确定性的个人通常报告迁移意愿较低，但在失业救济金水平较高的情况下，他们的迁移意愿会增加。因此，我们的研究结果确实表明，福利安排主要服务于安全网功能，需要从原籍国和目的地国之间的相对角度来理解。