Global–regional interaction to extend access to social protection for migrant workers: Insights from ASEAN and MERCOSUR

Abstract

Universal access to social protection for migrant workers is emerging as a problematic issue in the implementation of free movement regimes at a regional level. This article focuses on the concept of regional governance as a possible mechanism to address the unsolved challenges of social security regimes to extend coverage. To this end, the article looks at current legal developments in two regional projects (ASEAN and MERCOSUR) to identify a creative approach to strengthen the development of national floors of social protection. The interest of using these case studies lies in exploring whether the regional integration process can play a major role in the progressive extension of social protection rights to migrant workers by facilitating the adoption of social security agreements.

Bilateral labor agreements as migration governance tools: An analysis from a gender lens

“…We limited our additions to agreements specifically for labour migrant flows and titled "bilateral labo(u)r agreement" or "memorandum of understanding." 3 Looking at dyadic links between countries by year, signing a BLMA was very uncommon, with the average country only signing a BLMA in a given year 4% (1/25) of the time; however, all estimates made here should be taken as conservative due to the often secret and private nature of BLMA signings. By the end of our project, we had assembled 318 BLMAs from 1930 to 2014 for 182 countries; these data became part of the basis of our analysis between BLMAs and development .…”

Varieties of citizenship in regional organisations: A cross-regional comparison of rights, access, and belonging

“…Beyond the EU, scholars have primarily focused on regional citizenship formation in Latin American organisations (Giupponi, 2017). However, the literature on citizenship in Mercosur, the Andean Community (CAN), and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) predominantly examines the implications of cross-border migration on regional citizenship policies (Cernadas, 2013) or focuses on the extension of certain rights in order to protect labour migrants (Fornalé, 2017). In other regional contexts, scholars have been investigating indicators for the development of regional citizenship, such as the establishment of regional residence and mobility policies (Okom and Dada, 2012), or focused on the promotion of regional identity and legally non-binding policies as building blocks in the making of regional citizenship regimes (Cabrera and Byrne, 2021; Weinrich, 2020; Neuvonen, 2019).…”