Global social protection : setting the agenda

Abstract

In todays' world, more than 220 million people live in a country that is not their own. Many people live transnational lives but the social contract between citizen and state is national. How are people on the move protected and provided for in this new global context? Have institutional sources of social welfare begun to cross borders to meet the needs of transnational individuals? This paper proposes a new Global Social Protection (GSP) research agenda, summarizing what we know and what we need to do moving forward. What protections exist for migrants, how are the organized across borders, who can access them and who gets left out? This working paper defines GSP; introduces the idea of a “resource environment” as a heuristic tool with which to map and analyze variations in GSP over time, through space, and across individuals; and provides empirical examples demonstrating the centrality of GSP for scholars of states, social welfare, development, and migration.