Environmental pressures and humanitarian emergencies, including the spasmodic immigration flows discussed earlier, pose great challenges to liberal states, demanding a larger state role in allocating scarce resources, rights, and statuses among competing interests often bearing compelling moral claims. But what is truly transforming liberal citizenship in all societies is the growing crisis of the welfare state. This crisis is especially grave in Western Europe and other states whose welfare commitments are both deeply entrenched and steadily expanding under pressure from militant trade unions, strong socialist parties, and even centrist and conservative groups moved by collectivist and egalitarian traditions. Yet rapidly aging populations, slow economic growth, rigid labor markets, growing global competition from low-wage producers, and other conditions mean that this problem will only grow worse in these societies, while widespread xenophobia rules out large-scale legal immigration as a possible solution.