The indifferent homeland? EU Member States’ engagement with the social protection of their nationals abroad via Bilateral Social Security Agreements

The doctoral thesis of Angeliki Konstatinidou aimed to answer a two-fold research question: whether EU Member States are concerned about the formal social protection of their nationals residing in NESS countries (i.e. No EU Social Security), and under what circumstances do the EU home countries engage in the formal social protection of their nationals abroad. To do so, drawing on the Marshallian concept of citizenship and combining it with Bauböck’s work on external citizenship this thesis set to identify EU nationals as a group of citizens whose (social) rights, when moving abroad, are governed and administered from the homeland. As the main concept at the heart of this project is formal social protection, the latter is understood as the bundle of policies that a state offers to both alleviate and prevent the risks that put people’s livelihoods in danger. This project approached social protection via Bilateral Social Security Agreements (BSSAs). This project employed the theoretical framework of diaspora engagement to trace and examine the motivations of EU sending countries to sign BSSAs. To answer this research question, this project adopted a mixed methods approach by quantitatively analysing a large N-dataset and combining it with a series of qualitative interviews with policymakers responsible for the signature of Bilateral Social Security Agreements. The main findings of this project highlighted that EU Member States are concerned about the social protection of their nationals settled in NESS countries. Also, this project reveals that, although the sending countries do not have a uniform set of motivations to sign BSSAs, economic and demographic considerations play a key role in the decision-making behind the signature of the agreements. Thus, this thesis contributed to the complex understanding of the role of BSSAs as an instrument of social protection and of the factors influencing countries to sign such agreements. Part of the results of her research were highlighted in her publication on “Diaspora Policies, Consular Services and Social Protection for Cypriot Citizens Abroad” (In Lafleur, J-M. & Vintila, D. (Eds.) Migration and Social Protection in Europe and Beyond (Volume 2): Comparing Consular Services and Diaspora Policies. Cham: Springer, pp 107-122).

The full doctoral thesis can be found here.