Conceptualizing Transnational Social Protection in Global Asia: Resources, Restrictions, and Risks

• In Event: Asia and Asian American Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 3: Asia and Asian America Section Roundtable - Assimilation and Transnationalism

Abstract

Transnational social protection (TSP), which refer to the ways migrants and their families assemble resources and support across borders, challenges long-standing assumptions about social welfare. Key questions in this literature include how sending states understand their responsibilities toward citizens living abroad, how receiving states address the needs of non-citizen residents, what role transnational and subnational non-state actors play when state support falls short, and what strategies migrants themselves adopt to secure the protections they need.

Much of the existing TSP literature focuses on migrants in Europe, the United States, and parts of Latin America. The Asian context has received comparatively little attention, despite offering a strikingly different set of conditions. Many Asian societies have undergone rapid economic, political, and social transformation while traditional familialism and, in some settings, Confucianism, continue to shape welfare regimes in profound ways. Welfare state scholars have examined how social protection systems across Asia have evolved in response to citizen needs and political pressures, but we know far less about how Asian migrants — particularly non-citizens in receiving contexts — negotiate with sending and receiving-country states and non-state actors to access the protections they need. As more Asian countries become both major sending and destination societies, understanding how transnational modes of social protection operate alongside nationally based welfare regimes in this region has become increasingly urgent.

Drawing on policy reports from East Asian societies (Japan, Taiwan, and Korea), historical and ethnographic data on Chinese-speaking societies and the Chinese diaspora, and evidence from case studies on Southeast Asian societies (the Philippines, Singapore, and Myanmar), this article offers critical reflections on the changing relationships between migrant communities and the state and non-state actors — operating sub-nationally, nationally, and transnationally — to which they turn for social protection. Taken together, our analysis illuminates recent developments and the challenges and opportunities they raise for Asian societies and members of the Asian diaspora.

Authors

• Ken Chih-Yan Sun, Villanova University

• Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College

• Lake Ching Wu Lui, National Taiwan University