Moving for a ‘better welfare’? The case of transnational Sudanese families.

The burgeoning literature on welfare migration, or the likelihood of migrants moving to countries with more generous welfare states, yields mixed results. This article aims to disentangle what kinds of considerations underlie the decisions of migrants and their families when moving to certain places to address social protection needs. We explain how Sudanese extended families, whose members are scattered across multiple countries, ensure their social protection needs, drawing from formal and informal institutions. Through a transnational approach, we analyse the mechanisms guiding the access, circulation and coordination of resources to cover for different but related social protection domains. Drawing on the life stories of members of a Sudanese transnational family, we contribute to the current debates on transnational social protection, expanding on the concept of ‘resource environment’. This article draws on 14 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with Sudanese migrants and their families across the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan