The articles in this IDS Bulletin are drawn from a conference hosted by the Centre for Social Protection at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Brighton, UK, in April 2011. The conference brought together academics and practitioners who understand social protection to be more than a palliative agenda for alleviating poverty and vulnerability, believing instead that social protection should be fundamentally interested in realising economic and social rights for all. This alternative agenda is one grounded in social justice, and it opens space for understanding how issues of rights, governance, distribution and access are critical for breaking the production and reproduction of vulnerability over time. The selection of articles in this IDS Bulletin aims to elaborate the linkages between social protection and social justice, to identify opportunities for operationalising the ‘transformative’ aspects of social protection and to strengthen the case for integrating social protection into broader social policy.