Puzzling Social Protection across Several Countries: Opportunistic Strategy or Risky Compensation?

In a context of increasing mobility, the management of social protection issues from below may encompass several countries. The limited studies on this topic mainly frame migrants’ use of an extended transnational social-protection space as an opportunistic strategy aimed at increasing resources. This chapter analyses the cross-border arrangements of dual Ecuadorian-Spanish citizens coping with the recurrent crisis, adopting a socio-spatial perspective of circulation over the life course. Our findings show that families flexibly adapt to such destabilisations through a mechanism of diffuse circulation of support as compensation practices implying a risky accumulation of constraints and vulnerability. This contrasts with the framings on migrants’ opportunistic and strategic use of social-protection resources and with ‘the welfare magnet’ or ‘welfare tourism’ assumptions. The study draws on fieldwork among 36 transnational families investigated through a multi-sited ethnography in Spain, England and Ecuador in 2015–2016, with a partially matched sample.

Labour Mobility from Eastern European Welfare States: Zooming in on Romania and Slovakia

In the last two decades, care deficits in Western Europe have been fuelled by demographic and social transformations, such as population ageing, changes in household structures, welfare programme reforms and an altogether lesser involvement of the state in care provision. These care deficits, particularly in high-income countries, have been addressed through migrant labour which, in turn, contributes to increasing care needs in the migrants’ sending countries. Through the example of Romanian and Slovak caregivers working in 2- and 4-week shifts in Austria, this chapter explores the linkages between care workers’ strategies to address the care deficits in their families, the features of relevant welfare provisions in their respective countries of origin and the workers’ mobility patterns. The chapter argues that existing (limited) care needs in their respective families allow carers to engage in transnational work, while extensive care needs at home are a hindrance for working abroad. In other words, there seems to be a tipping point in the care needs of workers’ families, which results in care workers no longer wanting to work abroad but needing to remain in their countries of origin and care for family members instead. Furthermore, the chapter argues that labour mobility patterns are also influenced by the ‘familialistic’ orientation of relevant welfare provisions in sending countries. As limited formal services put pressure on families to continue providing care informally, institutional frameworks for childcare and care for the elderly also influence care workers’ mobility strategies.

‘He Has a Better Chance Here, So We Stay’. Children’s Education and Parental Migration Decisions

In our chapter we take the concept of agency and apply it to migrants’ search for a safe present and a good future for their children, who face the global challenges of living in a risk society. Our analysis draws on biographical, semi-structured interviews conducted with Polish migrants living in the capital area of Norway. The findings of our research show that, although the labour market and good living conditions are important for Polish migrants while taking migration decisions, it is their children’s education that frequently transforms a temporary stay into a permanent one. We argue that Polish migrant parents adopt the strategy of ‘purchasing’ education, which they consider to be more beneficial due to the principles and values of the Norwegian welfare state (especially equality and educational support). In our research we found that the interviewees consider a Norwegian education as a ‘currency’, a credential in the sense that it will give their children access to further studies and/or better jobs. We focus on the migrant strategies, which often take the character of ‘escaping forward’ in an attempt to increase the life chances of their children.

From Familial Pressure to Seeking One’s Fortune: Chinese International Students’ Search for Geographical and Social Mobility as a Response to Societal and Familial Pressures

The societal changes seen in China since 1978 have created a sharp generational divide. Those born after the 1980s are mostly singletons raised with high life-expectations, both of themselves and from their families. The singletons want freedom of choice and social mobility, but the stiff competition at Chinese universities makes such ambitions unattainable for many. Study abroad is sometimes seen as an alternative gateway to social mobility. This chapter is based on participant observation of, and interviews with, a group of 40 Chinese students in Norway. The fieldwork took place from 2012 to 2014. The research questions concern (a) what motivates their sojourn, (b) their aspirations for the future and (c) how their migration would facilitate this. The findings are that they seek to construct themselves as global citizens able to travel and work anywhere. A Western degree is seen as enabling this. However, as single children, the burden of caring for their parents is theirs alone and a decline in the health of the latter would therefore necessitate an early return. Thus, the opportunities abroad are, by their nature, transitory and liable to be cut short at any time. However, the students believe that they will retain potential mobility, which may be used when their life-circumstances permit.

Beloved Land, Beloved Family: The Role of Welfare in Timorese Migration to England

Timor-Leste’s long history of colonisation and occupation has posed significant welfare challenges for the small, half-island nation nestled between Asia and the Pacific. Since independence in 2002, a budding pattern of migration has emerged, with increasing numbers of Timorese living and working in the United Kingdom. This chapter seeks to understand how the welfare concerns of these migrants shape their decisions about geographical mobility and vice versa. Analysing semi-structured interviews and overt participant observation conducted in England in 2017 and drawing on an extended version of the welfare resource environment framework, it explores the role of market, state and family-based welfare provisions in this migration trend. It finds that Timorese migrants in England utilise migration – and the market and state-based welfare provisions it brings – in service of their own, family-based social protection system. Migration between welfare contexts allows increased access to new and varied sources of welfare, valued for how they support a family-based framework founded on interdependence, relationships with others and responsibility. By querying the mobility of Timorese migrants in England in light of their welfare concerns, this chapter elucidates the culturally embedded ways in which migrants and their families piece together unique protection packages.

Welfare Considerations Underpinning Healthcare Workers’ Decision About Migration: The Case of Slovenia

This chapter explores the complex interplay of welfare-related considerations of healthcare workers underpinning their decision to emigrate. The concepts of welfare used here refer to the subjective perceptions of wellbeing of individual workers as well as statutory procedures and policies in place to provide them with social security and public services within different welfare-state regimes. Given the fact that healthcare workers are themselves providers of welfare to those in need of medical treatment and care, the chapter also discusses the workers’ ethical considerations about leaving patients behind on the one hand and pursuance of providing healthcare in other countries on the other. Hence, it explores how the provision of welfare to others builds into their own imaginaries and feeds the rationale behind the decision to migrate. The chapter builds on the findings from 27 semi-structured interviews conducted with healthcare workers who emigrated from Slovenia. Furthermore, the Slovenian case is used to illustrate the impact of their ground-level subjective decisions on systemic and normative frameworks in times of persistent shortages of healthcare workers in Slovenia.

Welfare and Mobility: Migrants’ Experiences of Social Welfare Protection in Transnational and Translocal Spaces

As migrants throughout the world make important contributions to their families’ social welfare, migration often implies changes in the ways in which individual’s and families’ needs for economic and social-welfare protection are met. This book contributes to the existing literature on transnational mobility and social protection by bringing in empirical evidence from across the globe which illustrates the multitude of mechanisms in which welfare concerns shape individual and family decisions about mobility and vice versa. By focusing on individuals, households and families rather than on nation states, the book’s contributors distance themselves from the macro and nation-state level of analysis in the field of migration and welfare research. Despite the emphasis on migrants’ subjective rationalities, the book’s chapters often highlight the political nature of many dilemmas faced by migrants and their families and expose national-welfare systems’ inherent sedentary bias. This book is designed for a broad range of audiences, from established scholars and policy-makers to graduate students of Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology and Human Geography who are interested in transnational mobility and social protection. We hope that the readers will find the contributions to this book insightful and valuable for their understanding of migrants’ experiences of social-welfare protection in a globalised world.

Keeping It in the Family: Rotating Chains in Women’s Transnational Care Work Between Italy and Ukraine

Massive female labour migration from Ukraine to Italy has now been taking place for more than 20 years and shows no sign of diminishing. The analysis presented here is built on fieldwork conducted in Italy and Ukraine between 2012 and 2019 – from which four cases have been selected as the main focus and which demonstrate the new way in which female migrants circulate care across and within the borders. The main findings reflect the emergence of a new rotational system within migrants’ extended family, when women begin to substitute each other in both reproductive and productive work. It allows them not only to balance the distribution of care responsibilities in the families left behind but also to make way for gaining new capital from mobility for their female relatives. In this way, migrants can better control the ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ of care and, thus, increase their personal empowerment in transnational space. Care then becomes not only a commodity but also a resource for resolving identity crises and achieving increased personal agency.

The Mobility of the Elderly and Family-Based Care: A Case Study of Chinese Migrant (Grand)Parents

This chapter focuses on elderly Chinese migrants, who have migrated within the country in order to take care of their grandchildren. It explores these grandparents’ mobility in relation to the intergenerational contract on care, a cultural praxis that constitutes the core of the family-based care regime in China. Based on qualitative data from 16 in-depth interviews with migrant grandparents living in Shenzhen, we analyse their decisions to move and their future plans regarding the dilemma of whether to stay or to return home. The analysis is embedded in recent discussions of Chinese descending familism or neo-familism. Additionally, the chapter proposes to add a welfare perspective in order to better understand the continuing internal migrations in China and highlights the connections between the migration of the elderly and China’s family-based care regime into which the care arrangements within the family are incorporated. Inspired by the concept of the ‘welfare resource environment’, we propose a conceptualisation of a translocal care space comprising transversal generational, sibling and in-law relations in order to understand the mobility of older migrants in relation to the care needs and arrangements within the family. Consequently, the mobility of the elderly can be understood as being determined by how these older migrants position themselves within the translocal care space.

Securing Old-Age Pensions Across Borders: Sudanese Transnational Families Across the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan

This chapter explores the social-protection domain of old-age pensions for Sudanese transnational families. The chapter is based on data collected during 14 months of multi-sited and partly matched-sample ethnographic fieldwork (2015–2017) with 21 Sudanese migrants in the Netherlands, 22 in the UK and 19 of their families in Sudan. Drawing on the life stories of members of different Sudanese families, this contribution addresses the question of what kinds of consideration underlie the decisions of Sudanese migrants when moving to certain places to secure their old-age pension. The chapter shows that the different mobilities in which Sudanese migrants engage have the double aim of both providing for their elderly parents back home now and securing their own pension in the future. The findings question the idea of ‘welfare shopping’ and show that migrants’ decision to move is not based so much on more or less generous welfare states but on the possibilities to arrange their own and their families’ social protection in a manner that is deemed better in the family’s understanding of social protection, which is strongly embedded in practices of generalised reciprocity.