A blessing or a curse? Migration and social policy in Central America

The relationship between transnational migration, remittances and social policy is of enormous relevance to understanding the functioning of contemporary societies. This is especially true in Central America, a region that leads many of the migration indicators, and furthermore very heterogeneous in its social policy and migration scenarios. Concerning the first, the region hosts countries with state led (e.g. Costa Rica), as well as informal-familialist (e.g. Nicaragua) welfare regimes. Concerning the second, it hosts net recipients (Panama and Costa Rica) as well as net expulsors of migrants (the rest). In all countries, labor migration has come to play a central role both in people’s survival strategies as well as in economies’ accumulation processes. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how migration and social policy interact in the region. In Latin America´s welfare regime literature, migration does not have a prominent place. Much of the literature, for example, seems to assume remittances as a type of equivalent to development aid, destined for productive or decommodification purposes. Yet, most studies on migration and remittances show they are used for daily expenditures. So, how does migration fit into Central America´s welfare regime literature? And how do migration and remittances - transnational processes - interact with national social policy? This conceptual paper proposes to start answering these questions, first, by bringing together, revising and analyzing the available welfare regime and migration literature; second, by proposing a framework for analysis, and third, by making a careful first step in analyzing available data on migration, remittances and social policy for the region to test the framework.