The migration process raises a set of migration-related risks and vulnerabilities, yet recognizing these as collective problems is paramount to formulating public policy responses. As one of the first subnational states globally, the South Indian state Kerala has institutionalized various social protection policies toward emigrants and returned migrants under the department of Non-Resident Keralites’ Affairs (NORKA) and its implementation agency NORKA ROOTS. Taking the case of Kerala, this article investigates why subnational states recognize their international emigrants and return migrants as deserving of social protection provisions. Subnational states matter as they are sites of diaspora identification, and it is where migration’s consequences, such as emigrants’ philanthropic development projects and the reintegration of returned migrants, unfold. At the same time, they have less legislative and infrastructural power than federal states in engaging with emigrants and destination countries. By drawing on original data, the article argues that (returned) emigrants’ access to social protection schemes is built on understandings of deservingness based on a combination of protection rationales and economic rationales, rooted in Kerala’s specific developmental and identity discourse. The study demonstrates that despite subnational states having limited institutional capabilities compared with federal states, they are essential stakeholders in articulating transnational social protection policies.

India is the largest emigrant origin country in the world. The majority of Indian emigrants work in low-wage employment in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. This paper contrasts India’s policy responses directed at migrants living in the Gulf countries with policies targeted at those in the Global North. India has extended substantive rights and symbolic inclusion to Indian citizens and (descendants of) former citizens residing in the Global North. However, while it established a social protection framework for low-wage emigrants in the Gulf, these emigrants are often unable to access other substantive citizenship rights and are mostly ignored at the symbolic level. Through critical approaches to the study of diasporas and the lens of boundary work, this article analyzes how emigrant origin states (re-)define belonging through differentiated emigration and emigrant policies. It shows that the Indian state links inclusive/exclusive boundaries of (symbolic) national membership, inherent in emigration and emigrant policies, to classifications regarding emigrants’ social identities, in this case class and religion.