Transnational Social Protection and the Role of Diplomatic Networks of Migrant-Sending Countries

In the contemporary world, characterized by national Welfare State systems in crisis or subjected to retrenchment, while at the same more than 270 million people are living more than one year in Countries of which they are not citizens, it becomes very important to understand what kinds of social protection, both formal and informal, transnational migrants and their families can have access to, how such protection develops across borders and how such access may vary. This article is set to describe and analyse the main elements of what is defined in international literature as Transnational Social Protection (TSP) and then to discuss what kind of challenges it poses to Nation-States, migrant-sending as well as migrant-receiving. TSP, as we will see, is a combination of formal and informal dimensions (Levitt et Al. 2017), even if often assembled together (Faist and Bilecen 2015). Nonetheless, our focus is on the former rather than on the latter, mainly on the activity carried out by the diplomatic network of the migrants’ origin Countries, representing formal elements of the “resource environment” on which these individuals rely to respond to their own social needs and those of their families. After a general description of the concept of TSP, we are set focus on the instruments and procedures adopted by a Country in order to provide its emigrants with access to some transnational forms of healthcare services, relying mainly on its local consulates. As a relevant example, particular attention will be paid to the case of the activity of Mexico on the territory of the USA, stressing the importance of the whole diplomatic network as a crucial part of their migrants’ resource environment.