This volume focuses on social support from a transnational perspective and addresses a particular set of needs and the corresponding lack of appropriate responses. Social support indicates “the mechanisms through which a social environment protects its individual members from threatening and impairing events and experiences, and which can support them in their coping efforts” (Nestmann 2001: 1687). Social support encompasses measures, interventions, and social relationships that help ease burdensome and impairing life events, situations, or trajectories. Social support can further play a preventive role in promoting well-being and welfare.