Asymmetries in Transnational Social Protection: Perspectives of Migrants and Nonmigrants

• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716220922521
• Author: Başak Bilecen
• Published date: 01 May 2020

168 ANNALS, AAPSS, 689, May 2020

DOI: 10.1177/0002716220922521

Asymmetries in

Transnational

Social

Protection:

Perspectives of

Migrants and

Nonmigrants

By

BAAK BILECEN

922521ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYAsymmetries in Transnational Social Protection

research-article2020

This study investigates the extent to which migrants’

embeddedness in two formal social protection systems

(country of origin and host country) influences the

resources they exchange in their informal supportive

relationships. I analyze the support networks of a matched

sample of Turkish migrants in Germany and their signifi-

cant others in Turkey to illuminate the conditions and

meaning of reciprocal resource exchanges, finding that

both migrants and nonmigrants perceive formal social

protection offered by Germany as superior to that of

Turkey. I show that those perceptions have implications

for how financial support is exchanged with the family

but have less impact on friendships. These implications

for family included unequal power relationships, changes

in equity among siblings and family, different valuation

processes of resources, and thus, (reciprocal) exchanges.

Keywords: transnational social protection; international

migration; reciprocity; personal networks;

multisited research; matched sample;

low-income families

Millions of people around the world use

migration as a strategy to overcome pov-

erty, not only for themselves but also for their

close family members who stay behind in their

country of origin. Migrants send financial

remittances home to support their partners,

children, and other relatives in their country of

origin (Garip 2014; Massey and Basem 1992;

Başak Bilecen is an assistant professor of sociology and

the Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the University of

Groningen, the Netherlands and affiliated researcher at

the Center on Migration, Citizenship and Development

at Bielefeld University, Germany. Her research focuses

on international migration, international student mobil-

ity, transnational studies, social inequalities, social sup-

port/protection, and social networks. She is the author

of International Student Mobility and Transnational

Friendships (Palgrave 2014) and has co-edited special

issues in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

(2017), Social Networks (2018), and Comparative

Migration Studies (2019), among others.

Correspondence: b.bilecen@rug.nl

ASYMMETRIES IN TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL PROTECTION 169

Menjívar etal. 1998), and the people whom migrants leave behind provide the

migrants with emotional support, a sense of belonging (Ryan 2011; Zontini and

Reynolds 2007), and an array of services (e.g., childcare, help with housing and

business investments) (Mazzucato 2011). Yet migration can also disrupt social

networks (Putnam 2000) that protect individuals against risks like poverty and

social exclusion, as ties are lost or watered down over time (Lubbers etal. 2010),

creating a need for migrants to strengthen such networks locally (Ryan 2007).

While transnational care arrangements have received considerable scholarly

attention in recent years (Baldassar 2007; Boccagni 2015; Bryceson and Vuorela

2002; Parreñas 2001), there is still little understanding of migrants’ personal sup-

port networks given that their lives simultaneously span two nation-states’ formal

protection structures. In general, research into social support (Berkman and

Glass 2000; Taylor 2011) often ignores the fact that social support exchanged

between persons is embedded in the formal protective schemes of nation-states,

such as welfare regimes. For instance, international migrants with a steady

income may send financial remittances back home to their siblings so that they

can hire nurses to care for elderly parents or relatives, because there may not be

sufficient state infrastructures to do so without financial help from the migrant

relative. The opposite could also be true: grandparents may go to the country of

destination to care for grandchildren so that parents can work, perhaps because

childcare is costly or there are few childcare facilities in the country of destina-

tion. When a person migrates, their relationships to people who stay behind are

embedded in the protective schemes of two nation-states (the origin country and

the destination country). I argue that these regimes affect the ways in which

informal social protection exchanged in these relationships is understood and

negotiated. The double embeddedness can give migrants and nonmigrants cer-

tain benefits, but it can also alter support mechanisms. In particular, I argue in

this article that this double embeddedness affects the reciprocity of support

exchanges and the power balance between the giver and the receiver of support.

A better understanding of transnational social protection is important to design

more effective social policies for families of migrants in a globalized world.

Families of migrants are geographically separated and are subject to different

welfare regimes, which might widen existing inequalities within and between

societies. More generally, an accumulation of knowledge in studies like this one

can shed light on how societal contexts affect mechanisms of informal social

protection.

In this research, I investigate patterns of social protection for Turkish migrants

in Germany and their significant others in Turkey by adopting a matched sample

in a multisited research design (Barglowski, Bilecen, and Amelina 2015; Bilecen

NOTE: This research was funded by a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG)

within the framework of Collaborative Research Centre 882 “From Heterogeneities to

Inequalities” at Bielefeld University, which I am grateful for. I thank all my interviewees who

shared with me their perspectives, lives, and experiences. I am thankful for Gül Çatır, and Aslı

Orhon, who conducted the matched-sample interviews in Turkey. I also thank the guest editors

Hugo Valenzuela García, Miranda J. Lubbers, and Mario L. Small for their feedback on the

earlier versions.