Addressing transnational needs through migration? An inquiry into the reach and consequences of migrants’ social protection across borders

Abstract

This article draws a conceptual map of the mechanisms, dynamics and consequences of transnational social protection (TSP) for low-skilled labour migrants and their family members. While migrants’ social needs have also a transnational side, the responses of welfare institutions, if available at all, are typically territorialised. This brings to the fore the prospects for TSP of those affected by migration – most notably, here, migrants’ dear ones in home societies. TSP can be analysed as a field of evolving interactions between a formal, thinner dimension and a more substantive, informal one. The latter builds on the circulation of remittances and transnational care practices, primarily within migrants’ kinship networks. Informal TSP is then discussed as a privileged terrain to assess, first, the promises and pitfalls of migration as social protection and, second, the social consequences of emigration on welfare arrangements in home communities. An analytical framework is eventually advanced, with a view to systematising research on migration-driven transnational needs, on the ways of addressing them, on the dilemmas of informal social protection across state borders.