This project draws on socio-legal and critical political economy analysis, collaborative policy design, and prefigurative law-making methodology to conceptualise and enact a grassroots-inspired framework for transnational social security law that considers the risks and potential of digital technologies in implementing social protection schemes globally. The project is motivated by the urgency to address the growing global inequality and maldistribution of power and wealth enabled by the current international legal order. It aims to explore the reparative and revolutionary potential of transnational social security law to contribute to a global politics of redistribution that critically engages with the changes brought by digitalisation. The prefigurative element of the project draws on the Feminist Recovery Plan project and insights from grassroots activists. This research will bring together community and activist groups, researchers, international organisations and other relevant stakeholders to establish the field of transnational social security law while reimagining a radically redistributive role for digital technology.

This project is led by Serena Natile.

About the artwork: the project image realised by Polish artist Paweł Kuczyński is inspired by the famous 1932 photograph ‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’ portraying migrant iron workers building the Rockefeller complex in the US. Kuczyński’s drawing replaces the physical infrastructure of the skyscraper with the less visually impactful but more pervasive digital infrastructure, and adds colours and diversity ‘atop a’ capitalist lawscape that enables the global maldistribution of wealth and power.

This project is supported by the Warwick Research Development Fund and the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF).