Transnational social protection: setting the agenda

摘要

Social welfare has long been considered something which states provide to its citizens. Yet today 220 million people live in a country in which they do not hold citizenship. How are people on the move protected and provided for in the contemporary global context? Have institutional sources of social welfare begun to cross borders to meet the needs of individuals who live transnational lives?This introductory paper proposes a transnational social protection (TSP) research agenda designed to map the kinds of protections which exist for people on the move, determine how these protections travel across borders, and analyze variations in access to these protections. We define TSP; introduce the heuristic tool of a 'resource environment' to map and analyze variations in TSP over time, through space, and across individuals; and provide empirical examples demonstrating the centrality of TSP for scholars of states, social welfare, development, and migration.