Social welfare versus transnational social protection regimes: the changing roles of church and state

ABSTRACT

In this article we argue that transnational social protection (TSP) is becoming the norm in the context of globalisation, heightened mobility and neoliberalism, but cannot be understood without addressing its religious components. TSP differs significantly from national welfare state regimes, which place the responsibility for providing social support firmly on the shoulders of the state. In contrast, TSP regimes involve multiple actors and opportunities in origin and receiving states and place most of the onus for social protection on individuals and families. This article investigates church and state interaction in the development of TSP across the Italian, Mexican and Filipino contexts. It advances scholarship in three key ways: first, it showcases how TSP is replacing state social welfare arrangements and brings to light those shifting church-state entanglements that are central to this shift; second, it highlights the historically rooted trajectories of church-state entanglements that these three cases have in common; and third, it shows that as TSP becomes a state tool in governing non-resident citizens, the church's critical stance in relation to state provisioning is central to TSP as a mode of migration government.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational social protection
• non-resident citizen
• migration
• welfare
• Catholic church

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Xabier Itçaina and Claire Schiff for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article is not based on primary research. Rather, as very little scholarly work on transnational migration addresses the role of the Catholic church in the social protection of migrants (for exceptions, see Fitzgerald 2005, 2008, 2009), we did close readings of a wide range of scholarly literature on other questions to uncover what they revealed. We searched the three electronic databases Google Scholar, Science Direct, and Web of Science using the following key words: the names of the case study countries, Catholic church, non-resident citizen, migration, and transnational social protection. This first round of article collection generated additional key words that we then searched for including welfare, faith-based NGOs, and migrant organisations. The articles upon which we ultimately based our analyses met the following criteria: they were based on empirical studies carried out in at least one of our three cases and were published in peer-reviewed journals. We opted to include the evidence presented in each article based on the rigour of the methodology with which the data were collected, its breadth and depth, and the strength of the analysis. We supplemented these materials with additional monographs and sources based on our knowledge of different aspects of this field. Our final analysis draws on 77 sources with approximately one-third relating to each case study context. We recognise that given the paucity of evidence available about our questions, we are unable to present a completely comprehensive analysis. Some of the sources upon which we based our argument only mentioned the Catholic church in passing, while others provided richly textured accounts. We also recognise that each of our cases deserves an article in its own right. Still, we believe that our comparison across cases makes a valuable contribution because (a) it enables us to capture some of the ways in which religious institutions have contributed to the ongoing shift from traditional state welfare regimes to transnational social protection regimes, (b) it allows us to compare the different ways the church and state work together that drive this shift forward and the multiple goals that these efforts fulfil, and (c) it allows us to get a sense of these changing relationships across time and region. We hope that this article convinces others of the need for more in-depth studies of the role of all kinds of religious organisations in providing TSP across the world.

2 The church's version of human rights does not extend to reproductive or LGBTQ+rights which it is in a position to thwart via its role as a permanent observer to the United Nations.