The strength and persistence of this form of racism are due to several factors, including racism’s structural position in modern society, a colonial root of welfare state, the intrinsic limits of social rights in capitalism, and punitive migration policies. An instrument of selection, exclusion and stigmatisation, welfare racism is a distinguishing feature of anti-immigrant institutional policies, which became specially aggressive in the neoliberal era with the dismantling of the welfare state and social rights. Integrating perspectives from Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, welfare racism results a global and structured phenomenon concerning world labour as a whole, producing inequalities and division in the working class.