POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE

Popul. Space Place (2014)

Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/psp.1903

Transnational Social Protection: Migrants

Strategies and Patterns of Inequalities
Thomas Faist, Baak Bilecen*, Karolina Barglowski and Joanna Jadwiga Sienkiewicz
Fakultt fr Soziologie, Universittsstrasse 25, Bielefeld, Germany
ABSTRACT
How migrants organise their social protection is
not a straightforward process but, rather, a
much more intricate and nuanced one, which
takes into account the manifold state
regulations, supranational frameworks and
civil society organisations, as well as the
migrants themselves and their signicant others
spread across various state borders. This
introduction to our special issue examines the
social protection strategies of migrants, the
ways in which transnationality shapes the
access and use of informal social protection, and
their implications for migrants life chances and
thus the production of social inequalities. It
provides a context for understanding the
articles that follow in this special issue as
statements of current research on welfare and
migration, as challenges of concern in
transnational studies and as examples of
migrants social protection, inuenced by a
variety of heterogeneities which intersect with
transnationality. Copyright 2014 John Wiley
& Sons, Ltd.
Accepted 16 September 2014

Keywords: transnational migration;

transnationality; social protection; social
inequalities

INTRODUCTION
he goal of this special issue called Safety Nets
of Migrants Across Borders: An Inquiry into
Social Mechanisms of Inequality is to present
and empirically substantiate a novel approach to

*Correspondence to: Baak Bilecen, Fakultt fr Soziologie,

Universittsstrasse 25, SFB 882, C3 Projekt, 33615 Bielefeld,
Germany.
E-mail: basak.bilecen@uni-bielefeld.de

investigating the nexus between (informal) social

protection and social inequalities by synthesising
insights from transnational migration studies and
social protection. Inequalities refer to unequal access
to material and symbolic resources, social status and
power that is, the ability to make and enforce decisions and ways of thinking. Since inequality refers to
various dimensions, we use it in the plural.
The major contribution of this special issue is the
systematic analysis, through a transnational lens, of
informal social protection within and across borders
and the implications for life chances and social
inequalities. The analysis of informal social protection is contextualised by also considering the formal
schemes provided by states and organisations.
Previous studies on social protection focus on the
national character of the welfare state in the immigration countries and the nexus between public
welfare benets and migrants access to them
(Faist, 1995; Bommes & Geddes, 2002; Sainsbury,
2006). And the literature on global social policy also
mainly deals with the institutional conditions of formal social protection schemes, ranging from pension
programmes to basic income security (Deacon, 2007).
Although most of the social protection is granted,
received and used locally and nationally, migratory
movements are increasing and challenging those
national frameworks of welfare regimes and provisions. Migration is a particularly suitable research
area for exploring social protection and inequalities
because it is both a reaction to social inequalities
between regions and countries and, at the same time,
an active strategy exit in Hirschmans (1970)
terms through which to address and ameliorate
perceived life chances and thus social inequalities.
Social protection is a key eld in which social
inequalities become visible precisely because it is
meant to decrease insecurity and increase life
chances. Only more recently has the informal and
formal conjunction of social protection in processes
of mobility in general, and international migration in
particular, been acknowledged (Sabates-Wheeler &
Feldman, 2011). However, none of the studies on
Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

T. Faist et al.
migration and social protection have addressed the
central question of how social inequalities are
produced and reproduced in the delivery of informal social protection.
In particular, this issue traces the strategies of
social protection among migrants and their sometimes non-mobile signicant others through the
medium of transnationality, namely the extent of
cross-border transactions in which migrants and
their signicant others are engaged. We argue that
the extent and kind of transnationality such as
following news and events, travelling across
nation-state borders or symbolic attachments
have an impact on how migrants organise social
protection. Transnationality is conceptualised as
interacting with other heterogeneities such as
gender, legal status, ethnicity and educational
and occupational status. The three main questions
with which this special issue is concerned are:
What are the social risks perceived and the
social protection strategies visible in migration
processes?
What is the role of transnationality in conjunction
with other heterogeneities within this relation?
What are the implications of social protection for
the life chances of migrants and their signicant
others?
In order to answer these questions, the issue
adopts a mixed-method multi-sited methodology
and presents empirical examples from three
different transnational social spaces.
The questions were posed as part of the project
Transnationality, the Distribution of Informal
Social Protection and Inequalities carried out by
the Collaborative Research Centre 882, From Heterogeneities to Inequalities, at Bielefeld University
(http://www.sfb882.uni-bielefeld.de/en). The articles in this collection are based on the project,
which has partners at a policy research institute
in Kazakhstan, and at universities in Poland and
Turkey. These partners are also co-authors of the
respective case studies.
Our fundamental proposition is that international
migration and certain forms of cross-border social
protection may constitute an adaptive response to
social risks and related inequalities but, at the same
time, may perpetuate old inequalities and create
new ones. After all, power imbalances, which underpin inequalities, also exist in transnational contexts
(Dunn, 2010). It should also be borne in mind that
Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

cross-border migration, inasmuch as it is not politically intended or forced, is the outcome of socioeconomic, cultural and political transformation and
related inequalities which are even, in some cases,
on the increase; migration thus does not at least
not directly contribute to reducing inequalities. This
does not contradict the fact that, at the individual or
family household level, geographical mobility and
transnationality may indeed be a successful strategy
for gaining employment and social protection
(Goldin et al., 2012). Nonetheless, as we shall see, at
this level, too, mobility and transnationality give rise
to the (re)production of inequalities.
The outline of this paper is as follows. First, we
highlight the three main objectives of this introduction: conceptualising transnationality as a marker of
heterogeneity, showing the nexus between social
protection and inequalities and describing the main
methodological challenges in our transnational
approach. Second, we provide the conceptual framework guiding the analysis of the empirical articles in
this issue. Third, we briey summarise the articles in
this themed collection.

MAIN OBJECTIVES OF THIS SPECIAL ISSUE

There is a lacuna within the body of literature
addressing social protection across borders. Social
protection refers to strategies designed to cope with
the social risks arising in capitalist economies, in
elds such as employment, healthcare and education, which might impede the realisation of life
chances as dened in the United Nations Convention on Social Security in 1952 (see Bilecen &
Barglowski 2015). On the one hand, there are studies which investigate the conditions for informal
cross-border protection such as migration regimes
and citizenship rights, and the technologies
enabling its provision (Baldassar, 2007) and which
emphasise the agency of migrant subjects by
exploring practices of care and mutual informal
protection over long distances (Parreas, 2001;
Orozco & Lowell, 2006). On the other hand,
another strand of research holds that a new global
underclass is emerging which consists of female
migrant care workers moving from countries at
the global periphery to countries at the global centre
(Anderson, 2000; Hochschild, 2000). However, none
of the relevant studies have addressed the role of
transnationality in social protection across borders
and the inequalities arising from it. Taking this
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Transnational Social Protection

lacuna as a starting point, this special issue accomplishes three objectives.
First, it introduces a ne-grained concept of
transnationality as a continuum from thin to thick
cross-border engagements. Thus transnationality
can usefully be conceived of not as a dichotomous
characteristic but as a variable. To use an interval
scale is to escape from the dichotomising use of
transnational vs national and to systematically
map transnationality for diverse groups who hold
different legal statuses, such as asylum seekers or
labour migrants. We conceptualise transnationality
as an attribute of social actors. In so doing, this special issue moves beyond narrow conceptualisations
based on ethnicity or nationality and includes a variety of heterogeneities including transnationality
akin to others, including gender, age, worldview,
class, legal status, etc.
Second, this issue focuses on informal social
protection, a widely neglected eld but one
which tightly connects this realm with formal
social protection that is, those forms of social
protection provided by the state and organisations. After all, social protection also depends on
kinship and friendship.
Third, we use a mix of methods, both qualitative and quantitative, to disentangle the complex
web of transactions across borders which form
part of informal social protection strategies and
their embeddedness in formal social protection
schemes run by states and organisations. This is
a practical step beyond the mere criticism of
methodological nationalism and toward a transnational methodology.
Transnationality as Heterogeneity
Transnationality connotes the social practices of
agents individuals, groups, communities and
organisations across the borders of nation-states.
The term denotes a spectrum of cross-border ties in
various spheres of social life familial, sociocultural, economic and political ranging from
travel, through visits to promoting ideas. Seen in this
way, agents transnational ties constitute a marker of
heterogeneity akin to other heterogeneities such as
age, gender, citizenship, sexual orientation, cultural
preferences or language use. In short, transnational
ties can be understood as occupying a continuum
from low to high or thin to thick, and from very
few and short-lived ties to those that are multiple,
dense and continuous over time. Transnationality is
Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

not limited to physical mobility across borders

but also includes channels such as online communication. Thus, for our purposes, migrants and
non-migrants should not be considered simply as
transnational or not, but as being transnational to
varying degrees and in different realms. Also, it is
worth remembering that the degree of transnationality may differ over the life-course of migrants
and their signicant others. Remitting money or
taking care of the elderly or children may be
restricted to specic periods in life. More importantly, transnationality is not restricted to spatially
mobile persons: the non-mobile family members of
migrants may also engage in activities across borders, such as exchanging information (Faist et al.,
2013). While legal status and religious afliation
are often related to others heterogeneities in the
study of informal social protection (Yeates, 2009),
transnationality is barely taken into account. By
combining the transnational and the intersectional
approaches, we re-conceptualise transnationality
as a marker of heterogeneity (Faist, 2014). In order
to shed light on how transnationality interacts with
other heterogeneities, we use the concept of
intersectionality as a heuristic device. Intersectional
approaches (Crenshaw, 1989; McCall, 2005; Walby
et al., 2012) take gender, class and ethnicity as central
structural principles for the production of social inequalities. It is crucial that heterogeneities are not
dened in an essentialist way. Our focus is, rather,
on processes of categorical boundary-making.
Thereby, attention is drawn to the mutual constitution of various heterogeneities and their enforcing
effects on social inequalities. Intersectional approaches, accordingly, stress the dynamic and socially constructed character of the processes that
produce inequalities.
Informal and Formal Social Protection and their
Consequences for Inequalities
Studies on social policies (Pinker, 1979: 218, 230)
and migration (Srensen & Olwig 2002; SabatesWheeler & Feldman, 2011) alike stress that spatial
mobility is often used as a collective strategy
among kinship groups seeking social protection.
International migration thus serves to secure an
income and other types of resource for family
members. The new economics of migration
(NELM) approach (Stark, 1991), in particular,
together with the livelihood approach (De Haan
& Zoomers, 2005), analyse types of informal
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T. Faist et al.
social protection that are practiced through
migrant networks and organisations in the context of global wealth disparities. Here, we dene
social protection strategies as multiple forms of
individual and collective coping with the risks
arising from their involvement in production
(e.g. paid work) and reproduction processes
(e.g. care). Informal social protection strategies are
those not provided by formal structures (welfare),
states and organisations. This means that all activities that take place outside a formally and
organisationally codied regulatory framework
for example, in family and kinship groups, cliques
or networks of friends and acquaintances are
dened as informal. These strategies comprise
monetary allocation and strategies related to the
production process, such as job placement. Equally
covered are social protection strategies that refer to
reproductive processes such as child-rearing or the
care of elderly and sick relatives.
Clearly, social protection structures comprise
formal and informal, state and non-state dimensions.
On a smaller scale, there are both non-formal private
networks of friends and highly institutionalised
kinship and family groups. The decision to migrate,
especially according to the NELM and livelihood
approaches, can be seen as a way of insuring the
family against impoverishment that is, mutual
assistance with respect to various social risks such
as unexpected expenses arising through illness.
Informal social protection is particularly important
where formal social protection either fails or simply
does not exist. This informal protection often
includes nancial transfers between relatives, for
example to help buy property, pay for health insurance or pay for a relative to study. The provision of
childcare in community day-care centres is by no
means guaranteed in the countries of immigration,
and sometimes has to be undertaken by relatives
who arrive from abroad to look after the children
so that their parents can go out to work. Sometimes
older relatives are brought over because they cannot
be provided or cared for in their home country. However, the opposite could also be true: formal social
protection is a basis for extending practices of informal social protection. For example, migrants in
Germany who have health insurance and a steady
income could provide help to relatives abroad in
covering medical costs.
Yet, the literature on social policies and migration
(Deacon et al., 1997; Jones Finer, 1999) rarely asks
about the relation between the distribution of
Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

informal social protection services and the production of new and reproduction of old social
inequalities. The inuence of transnationality on the
unequal distribution of informal social protection
for migrants and, possibly, their relatives in countries
of immigration or emigration is altogether neglected.
Therefore, a transnational perspective on migration
should, by contrast, inquire into migrants crossborder social protection strategies.
Recent research on the transnationalisation of
social inequalities assumes that transnationality
favours a simultaneous positioning of persons in
different systems of stratication (Wei, 2005;
Kelly & Lusis, 2006). This means that migrants can
be positioned in multiple ways with regard to
gender, ethnicity, class, religion or legal status, and
that they are positioned differently (with regard to
these heterogeneities) in the countries of both emigration and immigration. Migrants experience
social mobility in ambiguous ways for example,
when their socio-economic position improves from
the perspective of the home country, but their social
status deteriorates from the perspective of the host
country because they work in menial jobs which
are not on a par with their high qualications but
which still generate a better income than in the country of emigration (Goldring, 1998; Parreas, 2001).
Consequently, different systems of stratication and
notions of inequality become relevant for the social
positioning of migrants. This special issue contributes to these debates by showing how inequalities
are shaped and reshaped by migrants involvement
in social protection in various local, national and
transnational contexts.
Toward a Transnational Methodology
A mix of methods is applied to realise our research
objectives: semi-structured interviews with migrants
and their signicant others, participant observation,
social-network analysis, expert interviews with
representatives of institutions and organisations,
and document analysis.
As the rst step in documenting informal social
protection strategies, we conducted semi-structured
interviews with migrants in Germany coming from
Poland, Kazakhstan and Turkey. The interviews
were combined with ego-centred network analysis
to map not only migrants interpersonal contacts
in Germany and other countries but also to illustrate
the specic protection types given and received
(Bilecen, 2013). Following multi-sited ethnography,
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Transnational Social Protection

we collected data not only in immigration but also
in emigration countries, based on a matched sample
strategy (Mazzucato, 2009). This was achieved in
cooperation with partners based in the respective
emigration countries, who are also co-authors of
three articles in this collection. The respective transnational social spaces (Faist, 2000) were selected in
order to cover the broadest possible range of variants
of transnationality and legal position: Germany
Turkey (labour migrants and asylum seekers),
GermanyPoland (EU migrants) and Germany
Kazakhstan (resettlers). The respondents were
recruited according to their legal status, which gives
a rst proxy as to their right to formal social protection. We were thus able to examine the protection
strategies of individuals to determine whether or
not they were transnationally active, and to what
extent. This decision reduces the risk of sampling
on the dependent variable, which is a major criticism (Portes, 2001) of many transnationally oriented
migration studies. In order to derive relevant
categorisations from the interviews, participant
observations were made in both the migrants
personal and professional settings.
To set out the institutional framework and policies
for formal social protection in the immigration and
emigration countries, we analysed documents such
as laws, ordinances, rules, expert opinions, bilateral
agreements and international conventions. Second,
we conducted semi-structured interviews with
experts such as priests, imams, local authorities and
representatives of migrant organisations, from state
and non-state institutions, about social protection in
the three transnational social spaces (Barglowski
et al., 2015a).
OVERALL CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR
ANALYSIS
The analysis of transnational aspects of social
protection is embedded in an overall heuristic
framework which serves as a guide to empirical
material from qualitative interviews, document
analysis and participant observation. The goal of
the project is to identify types of social positioning
and life chances in cross-border social protection.
What follows is not meant as an explanatory
framework but as a cadre within which to inspire
the interpretation of the empirical material, with
the ultimate aim of connecting heterogeneities
and inequalities. A central heterogeneity which is
deemed important for life chances is transnationality,
Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

understood as the continuum of engagement in

cross-border transactions from thin to thick in
various dimensions of social protection nance,
information and the provision of care embedded
in political, economic and socio-cultural contexts.
Ultimately, heterogeneities and inequalities are
mediated by social mechanisms, a term which generally refers to recurring processes and developments,
and which links identiable initial conditions with
specic results (Diewald & Faist, 2011). We do not
use the concept of social mechanism to systematically account for causeeffects but as a heuristic tool
with which to better capture the social processes
involved in the (re)production of life chances and
social inequalities (Faist & Bilecen, 2015).
There are three main elements to Figure 1 (1) the
relevant reality, (2) social activities and strategies
and very important in the qualitative design used
here (3) the meanings, interpretations and denitions of the relevant reality and social activities.
This three-fold sequence already suggests that the
main aim of the framework is to identify types
and patterns of meaning and interpretation. The
analysis presented in the articles to come is a
bundling of (3) with respect to (1) and (2), and is
geared towards identifying the social protection
repertoires with respect to life chances and thus
also social inequalities.
(1) Reality relevant to the interviewees: this dimension
includes, among other aspects, the material
world, the social structures and (macro) and (micro) institutions which all function as enabling
and restricting opportunities for social agents
and for their activities. In very concrete ways, sets
of legal regulations such as mobility regimes restrict or enable the physical movements of persons across the borders of national states.
Welfare states distribute life chances, in that they
secure against (some) social risks; nonetheless,
for example, certain gender regimes may reproduce inequalities. In addition, meso- or microlevel arrangements such as the family are crucial
referring, among others, to norms of reciprocity
which are, at the same time, decisive social mechanisms mediating between heterogeneities and
inequalities. In an analytical way, we can conceive
of categorical differences heterogeneities as
aspects of social structure pertaining to, for
instance, gender (e.g. male/female/third gender),
race (black/white/various others), age and
transnationality. These are the heterogeneities on
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T. Faist et al.
which we mainly focus in this special issue. However, this is not to neglect the fact that other heterogeneities, such as sexual orientation, health
and body, may be equally important (see Dunn,
2010; Winkler & Degele, 2011). In this analytical
sense the differences are not yet imbued with
meanings which refer to social inequalities.
(2) Activities and strategies in which individual and/or
collective agents are engaged: the activities of interest
refer above all, but not exclusively, to those which
are relevant for transnational transactions
money transfers, care across borders and information exchange. In bundling such social activities,
we speak of strategies for example, strategies
of social protection. After all, migration can also
be a strategy by which to overcome the social risks
mentioned above.
(3) The meaning patterns which agents ascribe to the
relevant reality and activities: this dimension
connects the previous two in that it refers to the
meanings given to the social structures and the
various activities by the agents themselves. This
is an important realm of conceptual distinction,
since the meaning patterns are active social
constructions of both activities and structure on

the part of agents. Out of these meaning patterns

we seek to distill the interpretations with respect
to life chances. This is a double task. First, it is a
task of the researcher to reconstruct the meaning(s) which agents have given to the relevant
reality, activities and strategies. Second, it is the
researcher him-/herself who is constituting these
patterns and who thus needs to reect upon the
process of doing these constructions. This
latter task necessitates self-reection on the
researchers positionality vis--vis those being
researched and the context in which the interpretation of the interpretation is undertaken.
This calls for a reection on our methodological approach and methods.
Here, social mechanisms such as reciprocity or
exploitation serve as heuristic guides to better describe the social relations between agents within
groups such as families and friendship networks.
In a nutshell, social mechanisms such as reciprocity,
and also exploitation and opportunity hoarding, are
used as heuristic instruments to ask questions about
the meanings given to social structural aspects and
social activities. For example, with respect to

Figure 1. A framework for the study of social protection.

Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Transnational Social Protection

reciprocity it is important to ask whether or to what
extent there is some sort of balance between the
agents involved and the institutional framework in
which this occurs. If, for instance, an uncle supports
a niece abroad by paying her tuition fees, we ask
about the family expectations and obligations
involved and about the educational system in which
the studies take place. We also are interested in the
temporal dimension in which the respective transactions occur. It is only in the concluding article that
social mechanisms are used in their most common
meaning, as concepts to arrive at middle-range
causal explanations.
The transnational approach is particularly apt
for capturing the meaning patterns of the agents
involved because national states, for example, can
be foils of reference upon which to project ideas,
norms, values, etc. The other national system can
serve to sharpen comments on, and evaluations
and understandings of specic national contexts.
For instance, formal protection via the welfare state
(e.g. healthcare) in another country can be labelled
as more or less advanced compared to someones
current country of residence. Yet this would be a
classical comparison or foil of reference. What is
transnational in this case is, particularly, the
potential that ideas, norms, goods and people all
cross borders in a common transnational social
space. With respect to people, transnational social
spaces are potential spaces of comparison that
is, people compare their social position and their
life chances in contexts which may reach across
borders, so that production and circulation of
power are seen through discourses of difference
(Smith & Bailey, 2004: 358). People sometimes even
act as brokers of ideas between different systems of
education, work or health. Horizons of comparison crossing national borders are thus constantly
in the making.
OVERVIEW OF THE ARTICLES
Our collection of papers offers a unique combination
of theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives on cross-border social protection. Bilecen and
Barglowski (2015) conceptualise the relationship
between formal and informal social protection. By
looking specically at the literature on welfare,
family and work, the authors argue that the
relationship between formal and informal social
protection can be best captured by the term assemblage which, in this case, suggests a combination of
Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

various (welfare) state systems and state/non-state

frameworks. It is thus not useful to strictly separate
informal and formal sectors, or to conceptualise informal social protection as being decient compared
to the formal sector. In order to understand the
strategies for informal social protection undertaken
by migrants and their signicant others, and the
implications for the (re)production of inequalities,
Bilecen and Barglowski (2015) advocate for a close
empirical analysis of how informal and formal
practices and institutions are related.
This special issue highlights and addresses
methodological challenges and thus goes beyond
discussion of conceptual issues by implementing a
novel research design. In their article, Barglowski
et al. (2015a) shed light on the methodological
challenges of transnational studies and, more specifically, the empirical applications for social protection. The authors not only discuss the major issues
usually faced by transnational studies, such as
methodological nationalism, essentialism and the
positionality of researchers, but also illustrate the
ways in which those challenges can be reected on
by adopting a multi-sited mixed-method research
design in the eld of social protection.
Drawing on the concept of transnationality and
its application in a multi-sited research design,
this special issue provides different perspectives
from both the country of immigration and those
of emigration. Therefore, the next four articles
are empirical studies based on matched samples.
That by Bilecen and Sienkiewicz (2015) serves as
a bridge to the other three, which deal with
different transnational social spaces. Bilecen and
Sienkiewicz (2015) map the social protection
patterns of migrants from Kazakhstan, Poland and
Turkey. They draw on 300 ego-centric network cases
and sixty qualitative interviews to illustrate the
characteristics of the sample, which is also used in
the following three empirical articles, and investigate the importance of various heterogeneities in
the ways in which social protection is organised
by these migrants. They also introduce dimensions
to measure transnationality, dened as an attribute
of the respondents. It turns out that transnationality
and informal social protection patterns are distributed differently within the three transnational social
spaces. While the ndings suggest that relations of
care took rst place for all migrants in the sample,
migrants from Poland have the highest engagement
with this aspect of social protection. Migrants from
Kazakhstan receive the most information, whereas
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T. Faist et al.
those from Turkey are more active in nancial transactions and socialising as a site for the exchange of information on social protection. In addition, the
authors nd a strong correlation between socialising
and social protection for all migrants, illustrating that
socialising serves as a proxy via which to tap into
protective resources in the networks. In their network article, which precedes the study of the three
transnational social spaces, Bilecen and Sienkiewicz
(2015) illustrate typical cases exemplifying migrants
and their protective networks for each transnational
social space.
As one of the three social-space case studies,
Bilecen et al. (2015) explore the GermanTurkish
transnational social space. After a portrayal of the
German and the Turkish welfare systems which
constitute an opportunity context for the migrants,
they analyse strategies of social protection. This
analysis is based on empirical evidence collected
through twenty interviews with migrants from
Turkey and ten with their signicant others in
Turkey. The authors identify the signicance of
social activities in order to tap into the concept of
informal social protection. Social activities such as
preparing and having dinner and breakfast together,
celebrating religious festivals, and watching football
matches constitute the meaning of life for their
respondents. The authors argue that, through
socialising, migrants are able to tap into informal
social protection. They refer to stitching, a strategy
by which migrants in Germany continually attach
themselves to society in their country of origin, and
are thus included in the information ows and nancial transfers which constitute a crucial part of their
social protection. Using the examples of retirement
benets, healthcare and religious practices, Bilecen
et al. (2015) illustrate the meaning of staying
connected with Turkey for their respondents protection. Moreover, the authors also explain the ways
in which the strategies of social protection are
shaped by comparative discourses of superior
formal protection in Germany and inferior protection in Turkey while also considering the meanings
attached to reciprocal exchanges of protection
among family members and friends.
Focusing on the GermanPolish transnational
social space, the contribution by Barglowski et al.
(2015b) identies caregiving as the most important
cross-border dimension of social protection for
Polish migrants. Based on twenty interviews with
Polish migrants in Germany and ten with their signicant others in Poland, the authors argue that
Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

the main orientation towards caregiving is, on the

one hand, educational aspirations for the children
in Germany and, on the other, maintaining ties to
relevant their signicant others in Germany. They
advocate that caregiving in the PolishGerman
transnational social space is embedded in hierarchically ordered meanings of good care. Meanings
are not only related towards who is the best (family)
caregiver, but also to formal protection. The authors
attribute transnationality as a dynamic category
elucidating two implications in the realm of care:
rst, remaining attached to country of origin is
not a social fact per se, but is related to keeping in
touch with people who are perceived as relevant
for social protection. Second, strategies of (family)
care change in the course of migration, as being
situated in different countries inuences interpretations of reciprocity. As a distinct feature of the transnational social space, care strategies are patterned
by narratives in the PolishGerman transnational
social space towards better living conditions and
good formal protection in Germany.
The third case study, by Sienkiewicz et al. (2015),
focuses on the GermanKazakh space. While
Barglowski et al. (2015b) address formal and informal
social protection assemblages in home and host
countries, Sienkiewicz et al. (2015) demonstrate,
through twenty interviews with migrants from
Kazakhstan and ten with their signicant others in
the country of origin, that migrants from Kazakhstan
organise their social protection mainly in Germany.
Due to their migration history as resettlers, Kazakh
migrants obtained German citizenship upon arrival
in Germany, which gives them access to formal social
protection there; the authors illustrate how their
respondents use formal and informal social protection in equal measure. They identify symbolic protection by sending parcels between Germany and
Kazahkstan as a strategy for those decreasing numbers of resettlers who still have active ties with their
relatives in Kazakhstan. This symbolic practice is
embedded in a transnational space of comparison,
where family members compare life chances, mostly
in terms of formal social protection, which shape
different expectations toward reciprocity within
families. Their contribution identies the different
evaluations of life chances and expectations within
transnational families through the perspective of
who has, and who does not have, access to good
formal protection.
Last, in the concluding article, Faist and Bilecen
(2015) place the links between social protection
Popul. Space Place (2014)
DOI: 10.1002/psp

Transnational Social Protection

and social inequalities in a broader context: the
transnational social question namely the conicts
around cross-border social inequalities is a multifaceted one. It is linked not only to inequalities
generated by heterogeneities such as class, gender,
ethnicity, legal status and religion, but also to the
perception that cross-border interdependence has
grown and that transnational interactions themselves have become a criterion for differentiation.
Transnationality is of strategic signicance for an
understanding of the transnational social question,
because it reveals the cross-connections of the
fragmented world of social protection. This contribution provides a window into the social mechanisms that support social protection across borders
and how these mitigate old and generate new social
inequalities. In this way, Faist and Bilecen (2015)
summarise the central arguments of the social
protection strategies utilised by migrants and their
signicant others both within and across borders,
the inequalities they are faced with and the social
mechanisms operating behind the scenes. For future
research, the question arises as to which standards
mobile individuals and their signicant others use
to evaluate inequalities, and in which contexts
which norm of equality is activated or muted to
deal with heterogeneities and inequalities.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We especially would like to thank Andreas Herz,
Eleonore Kofman, Anna Korteweg, Magdalena
Nowicka, Birgit Pfau-Efger, Jens Schneider,
Michael Schnhuth and Wolfgang Schrer as well
as anonymous reviewers who have contributed to
the improvement of the current special issue with
their comments. We are also grateful to the funding
received from German Research Foundation (DFG)
within the framework of the Collaborative Research
Centre 882 From Heterogeneities to Inequalities.

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