Transnational Social Protection Research Articles

Free Movement of Persons and European Solidarity Revisited

Abstract This paper analyses the case-law of the European Court of Justice on the scope and limits of cross-border access of economically inactive Union citizens to national systems of social assistance. The author de-constructs and challenges the weak rhetoric of transnational solidarity generously deployed by the Court of Justice at the beginning of the expansive cycle of its case-law on the transnational social protection rights of mobile EU citizens. The most recent case-law shows, in fact, a spectacular retreat from this rhetoric in tune with the neo-nationalistic and social-chauvinistic moods prevailing in Europe.

Approaching Transnational Social Protection: Methodological Challenges and Empirical Applications

AbstractTransnational social spaces are multidimensional in terms of the socio‐spatial categories – that is, local, global, and national – and different actors and institutions involved. Recent developments in transnational methodology argue for a thorough reflection on the challenges of methodological nationalism, essentialism, and researchers' positionality. Therefore, in designing and conducting transnational research, reflections on methodological challenges become a crucial step. Yet, as these challenges often remain to be discussed on a methodological level, their implementation still needs to be set out clearly to be useful for empirical research in transnational social spaces such as on social protection. For that reason, we discuss transnational research designs as well as different methods of data collection and analysis. We argue for a multisited and mixed‐method research design, which includes the emigration and the immigration countries, as well as the involvement of research teams located across borders. Thereby, a combination of perspectives between emigration and immigration countries in transnational social spaces can be achieved. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Transnational Social Protection: Migrants' Strategies and Patterns of Inequalities

AbstractHow migrants organise their social protection is not a straightforward process but, rather, a much more intricate and nuanced one, which takes into account the manifold state regulations, supranational frameworks and civil society organisations, as well as the migrants themselves and their significant others spread across various state borders. This introduction to our special issue examines the social protection strategies of migrants, the ways in which transnationality shapes the access and use of informal social protection, and their implications for migrants' life chances and thus the production of social inequalities. It provides a context for understanding the articles that follow in this special issue as statements of current research on welfare and migration, as challenges of concern in transnational studies and as examples of migrants' social protection, influenced by a variety of heterogeneities which intersect with transnationality. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

On the Assemblages of Informal and Formal Transnational Social Protection

AbstractSocial protection is an assemblage of informal and formal elements. These opposites – ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ – have been a feature of social policy discourse for a long time. Here, informal social protection is taken as that provided by interpersonal networks, whereas formal social protection is conceptualised as being provided by the state and organisations. This article draws on several bodies of literature on social protection to show how the informal and formal are entangled. We argue for tracing them as ‘assemblages’, going beyond a static understanding of social protection because social actors constantly negotiate the use of informal welfare schemes with formal ones. These negotiations have implications for social inequalities arising out of heterogeneities. Therefore, this article advocates an understanding that recognises that informal and formal protection are interconnected and approached as an assemblage that is important to life chances and, thus, to the production and reproduction of inequalities in transnational social spaces. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.