Centre for the Study of Migration Annual Lecture, Queen Mary University of London

Transnational Social Protection: Setting the Agenda

Professor Peggy Levitt (Wellesley College)

How are people on the move protected and provided for in the contemporary global context? Have institutionalsources of social welfare begun to cross borders to meet the needs of individuals who live transnational lives?

Social welfare has long been considered something which states provide to its citizens. Yet today 220 million people live in a country in which they do not hold citizenship. In this talk, I will propose a transnational social protection (TSP) research agenda designed to map the kinds of protections which exist for people on the move, determine how these protections travel across borders, and analyse variations in access to these protections. I will define TSP; introduce the heuristic tool of a ‘resource environment’ to map and analyse variations in TSP over time, through space, and across individuals; and provide empirical examples demonstrating the centrality of TSP for scholars of states, social welfare, development, and migration.

Peggy Levitt is Chair of the sociology department and the Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American Studies at Wellesley College and co-Director of Harvard University’s Transnational Studies Initiative. Her most recent book, Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display, was published by the University of California Press in July 2015. Peggy was the CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the American University of Cairo in March 2015 and a Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute in Summer 2015. In 2014, she received an Honorary Doctoral Degree from Maastricht University, held the Astor Visiting Professorship at Oxford University, and was a guest professor at the University of Vienna. She was the Visiting International Fellow at the Vrije University in Amsterdam from 2010–2012 and the Willie Brandt Guest Professor at the University of Malmö in 2009. Her books include Religion on the Edge (Oxford University Press, 2012), God Needs No Passport (New Press, 2007), The Transnational Studies Reader (Routledge, 2007). A film based on her work, Art Across Borders, came out in 2009.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.

How to Find Us

The lecture will take place in our Arts Two Lecture Theatre on the Mile End campus (map here: http://www.qmul.ac.uk/docs/about/26065.pdf). The Mile End campus is close to Mile End and Stepney Green Underground stations. There are no parking facilities on site, so please use public transport to attend. Access the lecture theatre via the East Gate (Westfield Way). The lecture theatre is wheelchair accessible. Please contact us if you have any queries.

(image: Adam Jones, Ph.D./Wikimedia Commons)