Immigrants’ Barriers to Accessing Social Policy in Argentina and Chile

Much attention has been paid to how immigrants are incorporated into welfare states in the Global North, but the Global South has been overlooked. This article studies barriers that immigrants face when accessing social policy in middle-income South American countries with high rates of immigration. With a focus on Chile and Argentina, I argue that immigrants’ barriers to accessing social policy depend on political elites’ views—as policies are expanded, policymakers will lower access barriers for universal policies, while they will raise more hurdles for targeted policies. This is because public officials view universal policies as “social rights” that include immigrants, while they view targeted policies as “costs” that must be contained. Barriers to access are measured through qualitative coding of social assistance, social pensions, and public health care that build on legal documents, information requests, and secondary literature from 1990 to 2022. Public officials’ views are measured through 80 in-depth interviews. In analyzing barriers to accessing social policy, this study contributes to the literatures on comparative welfare states and immigration, as well as comparative social policy in middle income countries.