Implications of the absence and barriers to cross-border pension portability (CBPP) : a study of Ghanaian health workers' experiences and return prospects from the United States of America

The introduction of Cross-border Pension Portability (CBPP) schemes to help migrants port, transfer, and assess their contributory social security benefits from host nations to their home country has been applauded by international organisations. Nevertheless, such agreements are increasingly prevalent among "rich-rich" countries while developing countries, especially African countries, are lagging behind. In the absence of such agreements, migrants who have contributed to the host country's social security system may be swayed by the prospect of forfeiting these contributions when they return and choose to stay at places they would rather not be at retirement. This thesis responds to these concerns by using interviews to examine the implication of the absence of CBPP for Ghanaian health workers in the United States, the possible feasibility challenges of implementing CBPP between Ghana and the United States, and the various factors that play a role in return migration decisions. I draw on neo-classical economic labour migration theory, new economic labour migration theory, structural theory, and the life course theory. The study involved 28 Ghanaian health workers in New York and 4 social security officials in Ghana as expert informants to help elucidate the underlying context-specific challenges peculiar to Ghana. This qualitative study has provided a contextual understanding of the implication of the absence of CBPP in the experiences of migrants, which further explains why Ghana may be falling out of CBPP. The study's findings shed light on how migrants' perception of institutions back home influences the feasibility of CBPP and their preference for unilateral over bilateral CBPPs. Other findings bordered on the maturity of data security systems in Ghana to handle shareable information that may be characterised in such agreements. Also, matters on the exchange rate, previous employment history back home, time and age of migration, and its overall impact on the feasibility of implementing CBPPs were discovered. The study discovered that Ghanaian migrants face unique integrational challenges, such as unrecognised educational qualifications, which further affect their social security eligibility status in host nations when they retire. After they are eligible, they are constrained by stringent social security conditionalities that compel them to extend their stays and, consequently, their work life to await the attainment of citizenship. They rely on citizenship as a portability tool since only Americans can assess their pensions anywhere in the world. Without this, migrants can only stay outside the US for a limited period. The study has significantly contributed to developing a conceptual framework that identifies some factors of return migration, such as health, source of finance, family, safety, and location of property as the main factors of return migration. The study further proves these factors are hierarchical, beginning with health as prime and ending with property location as auxiliary. The study establishes that decisions to return are made based on choice (Preferred) or rationality (best option). The research contributes to the ongoing discourse on CBPP for migrants, providing insights into the need for a tailored CBPP scheme for some developing countries to protect migrants' rights to their accrued benefits.

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