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It has been well noted by scholars and international organisations that the migration of individuals abroad for work has been on the rise (Mackenzie, 2005; ILO, 2017; ILO, 2015). These people move with the prospect that benefits will be higher than remaining in their country of origin (Martin, 2010), yet, migrant workers encounter several challenges, including difficulty in accessing social protection (Olivier, 2017), which may lead to costs, precarity, and vulnerability. Problems tend to be even more pronounced for low skilled migrant workers (Martin, 2010). Sending countries, therefore, could play a key role in ensuring their workers are protected while working overseas (Agunias and Ruiz, 2007) through unilateral measures such as welfare funds. An example is the Overseas Workers Welfare...Read more

Fulfilling the commitments of the United Nations (UN) Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development means leaving no one behind — including in crisis contexts shaped by conflict and fragility. Despite the achievement of important development gains over the past decade, widespread crises around the world interact with development trajectories to undermine progress and sustainability ( Opitz-Stapleton, Nadin, Kellett, Calderone, Quevedo, Peters & Mayhew, 2019 ; SPIAC-B, 2019 ; DFID, 2019 ). The gross impacts of these crises are determined both by the severity of the situation and associated threats, and the decisions made by domestic and international actors in response to this ( Opitz-Stapleton et al., 2019 ). Social protection in crisis contexts While it is difficult to...Read more