Social Protection Across Borders - Policy Brief October 2019

As a network of migrant support organisations, grassroots movements, and research institutes from across the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), the Mekong Migration Network (MMN) works to promote and protect the rights of migrant workers and their families. The collaborative research presented in this publication comes at a time when formal social protection schemes are taking shape across the GMS, and migrant workers from the region are travelling, in ever greater numbers, to countries where social protection programmes are well established. Access to social protection for this growing cross-border workforce requires an urgent policy response, as migrant workers risk being excluded or denied access to benefits and left insufficiently protected in terms of their life cycle needs.

The report “Social Protection Across Borders: Roles of Mekong Countries of Origin in Protecting Migrants’ Rights” examines the role of GMS countries of origin in improving accesses to social protection programmes both at home and overseas. Focusing specifically on Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam, it scrutinises the ways in which governments and other stakeholders from these countries of origin safeguard the social protection rights of their nationals, both when migrating abroad and upon return. The country-specific chapters that form the bulk of this study provides detailed analysis of the various law and policy frameworks currently in place, highlights policy gaps, and illustrates how these play out in real life through case studies of workers who have migrated to Thailand and Japan. In examining migrants’ access to social protection at home and abroad, a rigorous research methodology was employed, including desk research, key informant interviews, multi-stakeholder workshops and the collection of migrant case studies.