This project argues for and provides a framework for transnational social security law, paying particular attention to recent processes of digitalisation. Transnational social security, not as yet an established disciplinary field, is intended here as the global responsibility to guarantee decent living standards and access to essential services for All. The entry point for the analysis is the urgency to address the increasing global inequality and maldistribution of wealth and power enabled by the international legal order and enhanced by the apparent inclusivity of digitalisation. This has moved attention away from international law’s responsibility for redistributive interventions while creating new avenues for value extraction via fees and data. 

This research asks whether a grassroots-inspired framework for transnational social security law can disrupt the unjust mode of wealth and power distribution legitimised by international economic law and contribute to global socioeconomic justice. To answer this question the project develops an innovative methodology that brings together a political economy critique of international economic law (IEL) and a prefigurative law reform methodology. The former interrogates the assumption that trade relations (economic production) should be regulated internationally while social security (the distribution of the wealth created) is the responsibility of states alone or should be provided via aid, charity or philanthropy. This regulatory mismatch results in an unequal distribution of benefits and responsibilities that affect more vulnerable communities and countries. Prefigurative law reform methodology draws on prefigurative politics in the form of grassroots activists’ calls for global redistribution and an imaginative law approach that gives them the power to act as if they can remake international law. This methodology will be applied to four cases of digitalisation of social security programmes to examine the different distributive impact that these programmes would have if a transnational framework for social security law was in place.