"Migration, Ageing and Translocal Social Protection"

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For more details please contact zhang@mmg.mpg.de.

In this workshop, we take as a critical starting point the idea that the category of social protection is not fixed but defined and experienced differently by multiple actors. We consider how ideas about social protection are shaped by shifting global and local policies, entitlements and infrastructures, alongside an in-depth consideration of how migrant and refugee populations themselves imagine, creatively arrange and claim social protection ‘from below’.

Some of the broader questions this workshop will address include: what constitutes the ‘social’ in social protection? How is social protection imagined transnationally or translocally? Who offers ‘protection’ to migrants and refugees and what moral dimensions around ‘deservingness’ come into play? How does old-age factor into the development of social protection? How do social protection schemes promote or restrict the mobility of older populations?

In addressing the questions above, we will grant particular attention to the intersections of migration, ageing and social protection – including the experiences of older migrants and refugees, those who care for older adults, and older adults with migrant family members. Moving beyond a binary framework contrasting European state-based ‘welfare’ regimes with informal social support in other contexts, we aim to investigate how ideas about social protection travel to produce ‘hybrid’ formations (Levitt et al. 2023) and entanglements over time in contexts around the world. We will consider how ideas, norms and practices of social protection unfold not only on the global, transnational scale but also translocally in contexts of cross-border and internal migration and displacement.