Applying the Resource Environment to Ecuadorian Migrant Cross-Border Practices of Social Protection in Vienna and Quito: Possibilities and Limitations

With a transnational perspective, this ethnography of Ecuadorian migrants in Vienna and their families in Ecuador focuses on how access to health care, old age, and social security are arranged for across borders, both through formal and informal channels. The "resource environment" is used as a tool to identify services and channels for transnational social protection. Applying the tool to empirical data exposes a series of practices and actors which challenge neatly cut categories. While it allows mapping dissimilar services and actors, it has limits in differentiating between service provision with the financing. This distinction reveals the importance of individual citizen's private money. Thus, although the state may appear at the forefront of the protection of its citizens abroad, a tendency of self-responsibilisation in and outside Ecuador is evident.