With a transnational perspective, this ethnography of Ecuadorian migrants in Vi-enna 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 differentiat-ing between service provision with the financing. This distinction reveals the im-portance of individual citizen’s private money. Thus, although the state may ap-pear at the forefront of the protection of its citizens abroad, a tendency of self-responsibilisation in and outside Ecuador is evident.
Keywords: Transnational social protection; migration; care; health; reproductive work; ecuador.