Migration to and from Welfare States

This open access book explores the role of family, public, market and third sector welfare provision for individual and households’ decisions regarding geographical mobility. It challenges the state-centred approach in research on welfare and migration by emphasising migrants’ own reflections and experiences. It asks whether and in which ways different welfare concerns are part of migrants’ decisions regarding (or aspirations for) mobility. Employing a transnational and a translocal perspective, the book addresses different forms of geographical mobility, such as immigration, emigration, and re-migration, circular and return migration. By bringing in empirical findings from across a variety of Western and non-Western contexts, the book challenges the Eurocentric focus in current debates and contributes to a more nuanced and more integrated global account of the welfare-migration nexus.

Chapter 1. Welfare and Mobility: Migrants’ Experiences of Social Welfare Protection in Transnational and Translocal Spaces.- Chapter 2. The Mobility of the Elderly and Family-Based Care: A Case Study of Chinese Migrant Grand(Parents).- Chapter 3. Keeping It in the Family: Rotating Chains in Women's Transnational Care Work between Italy and Ukraine.- Chapter 4.- From Familial Pressure to Seeking One’s Fortune: Chinese International Students’ Search for Geographical and Social Mobility as a Response to Societal and Familial Pressures.- Chapter 5. ‘He Has a Better Chance Here, So We Stay’. Children's Education and Parental Migration Decisions.- Chapter 6. Settling for Welfare? Shifting the Welfare Access, Migration and Settlement Aspirations of Filipina Single Mothers in Japan.- Chapter 7. Labour Mobility from Eastern European Welfare States: Zooming in on Romania and Slovakia.- Chapter 8. Welfare Considerations Underpinning Healthcare Workers’ Decision about Migration: The Case of Slovenia.- Chapter 9. When the Expatriate Wife Returns Home: Swedish Women Navigating National Welfare Politics and Ideals of Gender Equality in Expatriate Family Migration.- Chapter 10. (Im)mobility Patterns among Polish Unemployed Migrants in Iceland Navigating Different Welfare Regimes.- Chapter 11. Puzzling Social Protection across Several Countries: Opportunistic Strategy or Risky Compensation?.- Chapter 12. Beloved Land, Beloved Family: The Role of Welfare in Timorese Migration to England.- Chapter 13. Securing Old-Age Pensions across Borders: Sudanese Transnational Families across the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan.