Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

JS-48

Global Social Protection and Migration: Reproduction of Inequalities or Safety Net?

RC19 Sociology of Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy (host committee)
RC31 Sociology of Migration

Language: English

Our session takes stock of the debate on migration and global social protection, by making connections between several disciplinary fields and perspectives, including global social policy, transnational migration studies and social support. Common to these research areas is an emphasis on the gap between the “inbetweeness” of migrants’ social rights, needs and claims, and the typically sedentarist logic and reach of institutional welfare measures. While the interface between migration and social protection has received increasing attention, descriptive accounts typically outnumber interpretative and explanatory ones. 
Our session aims to build a systematic map of the ways in which migration addresses risks and social inequalities while being conducive to the development of new ones; for example, by depleting existing resources for social protection. How mainstream welfare regimes are affected by it, and how they contribute to the development of non-statually based channels of social protection, are also issues to be explored further. 
In terms of formal global social protection, involving institutional actors, our interest is not only in legal schemes per se (e.g. portability agreements), but also in their substantial implementation, hence in migrants’ effective access to transnational welfare provisions. At an informal level, the potential of migrants’ grassroots social protection is also worth elaborating further. 
We welcome both single case studies and comparative analyses, theoretically-based or empirically driven. Of special relevance is research on formal and informal forms of social protection interacting with social inequalities, and the analysis of social processes on a local, transnational and global scale. Posters: