Securing Old-Age Pensions Across Borders: Sudanese Transnational Families Across the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explores the social-protection domain of old-age pensions for Sudanese transnational families. The chapter is based on data collected during 14 months of multi-sited and partly matched-sample ethnographic fieldwork (2015–2017) with 21 Sudanese migrants in the Netherlands, 22 in the UK and 19 of their families in Sudan. Drawing on the life stories of members of different Sudanese families, this contribution addresses the question of what kinds of consideration underlie the decisions of Sudanese migrants when moving to certain places to secure their old-age pension. The chapter shows that the different mobilities in which Sudanese migrants engage have the double aim of both providing for their elderly parents back home now and securing their own pension in the future. The findings question the idea of ‘welfare shopping’ and show that migrants’ decision to move is not based so much on more or less generous welfare states but on the possibilities to arrange their own and their families’ social protection in a manner that is deemed better in the family’s understanding of social protection, which is strongly embedded in practices of generalised reciprocity.