Care migration: The connectivity between care chains, care circulation and transnational social inequality

Abstract

One of the features of the global commodification of care is the outsourcing of care work to migrants. The aim of this article is to investigate theoretical responses to the incorporation of migrant care workers in transnational care arrangements. After a description of the scope of migrant care labour and the global care economy, the article summarizes the challenges posed by this empirical phenomenon and asks to what extent care migrations on a global scale have common denominators. The author discusses three topical concepts dealing with the impact of care migration for migrant caregivers and for their significant others who stay behind. The first is the Global Care Chain Concept, with its particular importance for transnational parenting; the second is the Care Circulation Concept. In different ways, both of them shed light on the contradictory characteristics of care migration. I then argue that the third concept, the theory of Transnational Social Inequality, is a necessary addition. By focusing on migrant care workers’ contradictory position, this concept aims at understanding the new features of asymmetrical resource distribution in their global manifestation. Taken together, these concepts are considered helpful tools to analyse the commonalities and differences of a large range of specific cases. Many examples used in this article are concerned with care migration in Europe.

The Impact of Micro and Macro Level Factors on the Working and Living Conditions of Migrant Care Workers in Italy and Israel—A Scoping Review

“…Similar to the findings presented in the theme perceptions on class asymmetries , previous research has shown that the migrant care and domestic sectors are often marked by a high degree of social and economic inequality [ 105 , 106 , 107 , 108 ]. Employers frequently discriminate against and justify paying migrant care and domestic workers low wages based on their gender, ethnicity, social class, religion and nationality [ 89 , 107 , 109 , 110 ].…”

Long-Term Care and Gender Equality: Fuzzy-Set Ideal Types of Care Regimes in Europe

“…When migration becomes a major link between different components of care systems, gender equality considerations multiply. Macro-level inequali-ties related to the differences in wealth in societies of the Global South and the Global North, and most recently of the old and the new member states of the EU, are interlinked with micro-level inequalities within the family as well as between caregivers and care receivers (Lutz, 2018;van Hooren, Apitzsch, & Ledoux, 2019). As a consequence, care work is embedded in complex hierarchies and power relations between the employer and the employee, the carer and the cared, and the citizens and the migrant workers of a country, and thus mirrors inequalities linked to gender and various other grounds, including ethnicity, nationality, race, and citizenship status.…”

Egalitarian ideologies on the move: Changing care practices and gender norms in Norway

“…For some migrant workers, the contact with family members is reduced to digital connectivity and temporary visits. This is what Lutz (2018) claims are the emerging emotional and care inequalities of transnational care giving.…”