International Migration and Transnational Social Protection: Theory and Practice

Within the broader framework of the study of globalization processes, the research deals with transnational migrants and their integration in hosting countries, as well as with the transnational policies implemented by some sending countries to support their citizens abroad. From the theoretical point of view, it will analyze international literature on the rise of the so-called Transnational Nation States (TNS) and reconfiguration of both their dimensions of politics and policy. These States consider their citizens living abroad as a substantial part of their population, granting them political and social rights, while they rely heavily on their remittances for the domestic economy. In the perspective of the Transnational Social Protection (TSP), the research focuses on the role of the institutions, both public and private, of migrant-receiving countries, as parts of migrants’ resource environment, paying particular attention to social services managed by local authorities. On the empirical ground, a case-study will be presented about the city of Genoa, in Northern Italy, home of a large population of Ecuadorean migrants, with an aim to analyze the relationship between the city administration and its social services, on the one hand, and the citizens and the consulate of that Latin American country (an example of TNS), on the other. Banking on this study, some more general conclusions will be made about the rise and development of TSP in its formal dimension.