Introduction: Mapping Migrant Welfare onto Social Provisioning

Informal Social Protection Networks of Migrants: Typical Patterns in Different Transnational Social Spaces

“…Previous research has looked at both people who migrate in order to have social protection and at migrants' access and use of the formal protection provided by host‐country welfare schemes (Sainsbury, ; Sabates‐Wheeler & Feldman, ). The main argument is that interpersonal networks are extremely important for migrants' social protection because they function as an ‘insurance mechanism’ with a ‘fall‐back position’ (McAuslan & Sabates‐Wheeler, : 71) where the formal schemes fail or do not exist.…”

“…In addition to the literature on social support that looks solely at interpersonal networks, recent literature has moved towards investigating migrants’ access to and use of formal protective schemes provided by nation‐states. Sabates‐Wheeler and Feldman () argue that there is a need to investigate the interaction between migration and systems of the welfare state at the juncture of increasing inequalities and pressures on welfare expenditure. However, in that strand of research, studies usually focus on migrants' use of host‐country welfare benefits or sometimes the portability of rights between two countries on a bilateral basis.…”

“…To investigate social protection strategies we adopt a network perspective not only because it gives us a systematic basis for our analysis but also because interpersonal networks are argued to be crucial for migrants' social protection (Sabates‐Wheeler & Feldman, ). In this article we investigate how migrants arrange their social protection within and across the various state borders by looking more closely at their interpersonal networks.…”

Destinations Matter: Social Policy and Migrant Workers in the Times of Covid

“…Migration itself is viewed as a means of social protection outside the parameters of the state. The sense of independence emanating from low-income migrant workers’ roles as breadwinners has meant that they have not organised as a category of ‘internal migrant workers’ to challenge their exclusion from welfare systems and social protection frameworks (Sabates-Wheeler and Feldman 2011 ; Rao 2011 ). To this extent, their voice as a legitimate constituency has been largely absent from the public policy space.…”

Combining transnational and intersectional approaches to immigrants' social protection: The case of Andean families' access to health

“…Next to gender biases, migration regimes also historically created distinctions between categories of immigrants with guaranteed access to health (e.g. mobile EU citizens, refugees…) and others —such as undocumented migrants— with limited rights to welfare (Sainsbury, 2006 ). Scholars have noted, however, that in Europe in particular these lines are now blurred by the increasing use of health policies as migration control instruments (Gsir, Lafleur, & Stanek, 2015 ).…”