Migrant workers, focused on Ireland

https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392118765213

Current Sociology Monograph 2018, Vol. 66(4) 577 –589

© The Author(s) 2018 Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0011392118765213

journals.sagepub.com/home/csi

CS

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

Helma Lutz Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany

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.

Keywords Care chains, care circulation, care migration, emotional inequality, gender, social protection, transnational social inequality

Corresponding author: Helma Lutz, Sociology, Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main, Fachbereich 03 Gesellschaftswissenschaften, Theodor-W.- Adorno Platz 6, Frankfurt am Main, Hessen 60629, Germany. Email: [email protected]

765213CSI0010.1177/0011392118765213Current SociologyLutz research-article2018

Part 2: Transnationalization of Care and Care Policies

578 Current Sociology Monograph 2 66(4)

Migrant care labour in the care economy

Worldwide, over the last 20 years, care giving in private households has developed into the largest employment sector for migrant women – and men, to much less of an extent. The global demand for caregivers has boosted the market of transnational ‘care migra- tion’ that accounts for the increasing feminization of migration worldwide. During the first decade of the 21st century, the demand for care workers grew exponentially in the industrialized states of the Western world, and in the middle- and upper-class households of Asia (India, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.), the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, etc.) and Central and Latin America. The International Labour Organization esti- mates that a total of 67.1 million people worldwide are employed in private households, of which 73.4% are women (ILO, 2015a). Although in many countries a majority of workers are internal migrants (e.g. China), the number of international migrant workers is also growing and comprises 8.5 million women and 3 million men (ILO, 2015a). An earlier report mentioned that given the inadequacy of sources it could also be twice as much: data collection in this sector is weak and reliable figures are difficult to raise (ILO, 2013: 32). One example in question is the calculation of migrant caregivers in European households. While the ILO calculation for Northern, Southern and Western Europe accounts for 1.8 million (ILO, 2015a: 5, 6, 17), sources from Italy alone suggest that there are 1.5 million migrants working in Italian households: according to Ambrosini (2013) one Italian household out of 10 employs a migrant domestic/care worker for care of children or the elderly.

Reasons for the continuing growth of this sector are diverse. They include the increas- ing state withdrawal from the institutional provision of care, in particular care for the elderly; the introduction of ‘cash for care’ policies into private households in classic European welfare states; and the continuing absence of state involvement in institutional care giving in countries where welfare state supply has been traditionally low (USA, many Middle Eastern, Asian and African states). Rapid demographic ageing, and a grow- ing number of female citizens entering the labour market, are also cited as factors that stimulate growth. Some regions and states treat the recruitment of female migrant care workers as a core element of their national labour market policy, designed to enable female citizens to engage in waged work, for example in Singapore (Teo, 2014), or less explicitly in the USA and Canada (Michel and Peng, 2012). This trend has received growing attention from economists: for example, the 2015 World Employment and Social Outlook predicts that until the year 2020 the bulk of new jobs will be ‘in private sector services, which will employ more than a third of the global workforce’ (ILO, 2015b: 23) and that a significant proportion of these jobs will be related to care.

The new ‘Care Economy’ is now considered to be one of the main trends in future global development. The think tank ‘New America’ forecasts that care work will be the largest occupation in the US by 2020: ‘with care-sector jobs growing five times faster than other large job sectors’ (Slaughter, 2016). Here, care jobs already outnumber those of the auto and steel industries combined, as Folbre (2006) has shown. Some economists hail these developments (e.g. de Heneau et al., 2016), while others are more cautious and critical. The commodification of migrant care work in private households is criticized for a number of reasons. Williams (2010) underlines that care provision, as part of a

Lutz 579

privatized employment sector, is rarely subjected to any state control or regulation. Fraser (2013) criticizes the neoliberal embrace of female empowerment and entrepre- neurship for its wilful ignorance of undervalued or invisible work – like the precarious working conditions of mainly migrant caregivers. She identifies care in contemporary capitalism as a ‘fictitious commodity’ (Fraser, 2012; Lutz, 2017a). Parrenas (2001) describes the global trend of care commodification as a ‘new international division of reproductive labour’, while Hondagneu-Sotelo (2001) speaks of a ‘new world domestic order’. Taken together, these analyses show that in many countries and continents, par- ticularly in global cities, middle-class women and men have entered what Andall (2000) calls the ‘post-feminist paradigm’, reconciling family and work by outsourcing their care work in large part to migrant women. The presence of migrants helps employers to cush- ion their gendered responsibilities. At the same time, the outsourcing of care responsi- bilities to another woman working in the private home simply perpetuates the traditional gendered division of care work in families. There are additional and structural compo- nents to this phenomenon: neoliberal welfare states need, and use, both legal and undoc- umented migrants to do the ‘repair and maintenance’ of their care regimes, mending the frictions and care gaps that otherwise would cause public remonstration (Ambrosini, 2016; Lutz, 2017a).

A common element in all care work migration is an initial situation in which wo/men from countries that are relatively poor, and lacking in social infrastructure (social protec- tion, free access to health care and education), move as part of a global labour market of commodified domestic and care work into the households of more prosperous countries. This movement can be temporary or permanent, legal or illegal. As a rule, many of these wo/men are well educated, but not exactly trained for the job they are doing; their wages are lower than those of autochthonous care workers. Thanks to asymmetrical socioeco- nomic conditions, these migrants prefer care work abroad to unemployment – or at best low-paid work – in the country of origin.

In the majority of studies these trends are termed ‘Global South to Global North movements’; this description, however, falls short when it comes to care migration between Asian countries (Michel and Peng, 2012) and from Asia to the Middle East (Gamburd, 2000; Samarasinghe, 1998). It also fails to describe the situation in Europe: here, the vast majority of ‘old’ Europe’s care migrants come from Eastern Europe. This results not only in East-to-West but also involves East-to-East migration where Moldavian, Georgian, and especially Ukrainian and Belarusian, women work in wealthy upper- and middle-class homes in the booming cities of Poland and the Czech Republic, while Slovakian, Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Latvian women from rural areas are employed in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, the UK and Austria (see Bauer and Österle, 2016; Cox, 2015; Krzyżowski, 2013; Leon, 2014; Lutz, 2010, 2011; Österle and Bauer, 2016; Urbańska, 2015). Summing this all up, the geopolitical framing of ‘Global South to Global North’ needs to be amended by analysing the wide-ranging and multiple scaling of care migrations, understood as complex relations, where in each case the respective gendered, ethnic and class dimensions of the phenomenon are taken into account (Lutz, 2017a; Lutz and Palenga-Möllenbeck, 2014). Care migrations are multifaceted, so they pose a challenge to theory building. It is obvious that the multitude of differences listed above cannot be included in a single causal analysis. My question is

580 Current Sociology Monograph 2 66(4)

how far the commonalities and difference of care migrations can be explained by three familiar concepts. By themselves, each exhibits a gap in explanatory scope; taken together, I argue, they can compensate each other for their respective lacunae. My sum- mary then discusses the pros and cons of each approach.

The Global Care Chain Concept (GCCC)

Macro-economists from powerful institutions like the World Bank often describe migrants’ remittances to their countries of origin as a ‘driver’ of development (see Dayton-Johnson et al., 2007). Their assessments derive from the fact that hard currency transfers by migrants are the most important source of income in many of the sending countries’ national budg- ets. Often described as a ‘triple win’, this view assumes that migration fosters the upward economic mobility of migrants and their families, reduces the care deficit in the target countries and improves the economies of the sending countries (for a critique, see Van Haer and Sørensen, 2003; Yeates and Pillinger, 2013). The GCCC, in contrast, emphasizes the social cost for migrants and their non-migrating family members. The objects of its analy- sis are care-providing chains, characterized on the one hand by a care drain – wo/men migrate away from their families, leaving gaps in the care provision of those children and elderly family members left behind – and on the other hand by a care gain – in the recipient countries families gain an extremely flexible and low-cost group of employees, and profit from the ‘emotional added value’ of people-related work (Hochschild, 2003). This concept of care chains encompasses the commodification of care work, migrants’ precarious work- ing conditions, and transnational social asymmetry: families in sending countries are char- acterized as winners, while family members left behind in the migrants’ countries of origin are losers who pay the price for their parents’ – in particular their mothers’ – absence (Hochschild, 2000; Parreňas, 2001).

A crucial aspect in the GCCC discussion is the debate about transnational families – where one or both parents are temporarily or permanently absent – manifested in ‘distant mother-fatherhood’ and ‘transnational parenthood’. In particular, the appeals to mother- hood and references to the situation of children left behind (Lutz and Palenga-Möllenbeck, 2012), and the widely differing assessments of that situation, continue to lead to consid- erable differences in research on care migration. In many receiving households, the uni- fication of mothers and children is either legally or practically impossible, because live-in caregivers in particular are obliged to cohabitate with their employer, and cannot run a separate household with their families. Many studies are concerned with the situa- tion of children left behind; however, they disagree in the effects of the mother’s absence. There are three main groups:

1. Studies that emphasize high educational achievements by non-migrating children as the effect of the financial support from their parents/mothers (Nicholas, 2008).

2. Studies that underline the negative effects of the care drain, in particular the absence of mothers for under-aged children (e.g. Coronel and Unterreiner, 2007; Cortés, 2007; Gamburd, 2000; Parreñas, 2005; and various World Bank reports).

3. Studies that reject the characterization of transnational parent/motherhood as exclusively negative or positive.

Lutz 581

According to Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila (1997), and to some extent Parreñas (2005), serious evaluations must consider a range of factors like: the organization of child care arrangements on the spot; the effects of these regulations; and the gender relations in care replacement concerning the (re)distribution of primary care responsibilities inside and outside of the family. A study on stay-behind children’s care arrangements in post-social- ist countries (Poland and Ukraine) detected task-sharing between grandmothers and fathers as a dominant pattern of motherly care replacement; predominantly, grandmoth- ers take on the role of substitute mothers while in addition they look after the fathers, their son (or son-in-law). In some cases, fathers withdraw completely from caring for and about the children, especially after divorce or separation (Lutz and Palenga-Möllenbeck, 2012; Palenga-Möllenbeck and Lutz, 2016). There are, nevertheless, exceptional settings where a father as a single parent performs ‘motherly’ tasks, for which the grant of social recognition is often refused (Lutz, 2018). This pattern was also found in Solari’s (2017) research about Ukrainian care migrants to Italy, although she emphasizes the high num- ber of migrating grandmothers who left their country driven by the desire to provide financial support for their stay-behind children and/or grandchildren. A recent study by Bauer and Österle (2016) on circular female care migrants from Slovakia and Romania to Austria, found that a significant proportion of fathers take over care and domestic work from their wives during their absence, an interesting development which needs further investigation. To date, most studies (see Carling et al., 2012: 193-198) confirm that the majority of fathers leave child care to their female relatives – contrary to the erstwhile assumption of migration researchers that absent breadwinning mothers would automatically be replaced by their stay-behind male partners. In many sending countries, stay-behind fathers do not give up their employment when their wives emigrate, whereas wives of migrating husbands tend to become housewives (Urbańska, 2015). Historically, in the case of male-gendered occupations like seafarers, truck drivers, soldiers or sales- men, absent fathers have been neither shamed nor blamed. In contrast, the feminization of migration triggered public debates about the presence of mothers being seen as indis- pensable to their children’s well-being and which blamed them for their children’s dis- comfort (Lutz, 2017b). Moreover, until recently, any discussion about ‘fathering and fatherhood’ has been hugely neglected in the study of migration consequences. Taken together, these studies indicate that in many sending countries as a reaction to female migration, gender orders are under pressure, and that much more research is needed to account for differences in gender regimes. So far, culturally coded gender norms, and the gendered division of labour, are the key elements in understanding transnational mother- hood and fatherhood performances, and hence, migrants’ childcare arrangements.

The Care Circulation Concept (CCC)

Criticism of the GCCC rejects the reduction of migration to a static two-way traffic rela- tionship, where migrants move in one direction (from the South to the North), to earn money that then travels the opposite direction back to their families. This view is criti- cized for portraying in particular migrant mothers as givers, their stay-behind families as receivers, and for ignoring care exchange between the various participants (Kofman, 2012). Critics call this a deficit model, which ignores virtual communication and

582 Current Sociology Monograph 2 66(4)

co-presence through telecommunication tools that enable the exchange of emotions both ways, and replace corporal by virtual proximity (Madianou and Miller, 2012). Baldassar and Merla (2014: 29) argue that, from a family perspective, the chain metaphor is unsuit- able because it reduces mobility ‘to back and forth movements between two nodes of a chain, where migrant and non-migrant exchange various types of support, thus reinforc- ing the distinction between the two sets of actors’. In their view, the chain metaphor creates the wrong impression that care is incorporated solely in the female migrant and ‘cannot travel without the migrant’, an approach which – according to the authors – is only applicable in a labour market perspective that foregrounds materiality and corporal- ity of care:

If we move from a labour market focus to a focus on the moral economies of the family, we can see that not only do embodied and commodified forms of care travel along the chain, but also other ‘virtual’ forms of care travel in both directions. (Baldassar and Merla, 2014: 29)

This view is persuasive as it emphasizes the complexity of family networks which can- not be reduced to a unilateral relationship. Indeed, the CCC opens up new ways to assess the mobility of care giving and receiving among members of families dispersed over the globe. Unlike the GCCC it is able to demonstrate the power of connectivity, emotional and moral support as a condition for the acceptance of long-term absence and adverse employment conditions. However, Baldassar and Merla’s concept is based on the ubiq- uitous accessibility of the new technology that facilitates ‘co-presence’. Moreover, tech- nology has its limits: although it may facilitate the exchange of emotions, it is not a replacement for ‘hands-on care’. While I agree with their view that social relations in transnational families cannot be limited to a labour market perspective, I disagree with its total suspension. Although it is important to uncover the transformative potential of migration by highlighting moral responsibilities of family members, it is also dangerous to glorify and prioritize the mutuality of kinship relations in care circulation as a given. Moreover, neither the asymmetrical relationship between the givers and recipients of care nor the precarious labour market conditions for migrant care givers, exploitation and the resultant tremendous discrepancies in social positions can be ignored, because recip- rocal relationships are impeded by them.

The CCC as a counter heuristic to care drain neglects the damage and asymmetry caused by migration, such as the creation or increase of what Nicola Yeates (2009) calls ‘emotional inequality’. It is, therefore, important to add a concept dealing with the cali- bration of transnational social inequality.

Transnational Social Inequality (TSI)

Many definitions of inequality use the nation-state as the ‘natural’ frame for equality measurement. This traditional ‘sendentarist view’ (Büscher and Urry, 2011), which sees immobility and the life-long inhabitancy of one nation state as a ‘normal’ human condi- tion, is obsolete where migrants are concerned: it fails to deal with the trans-border dynamics of concurrent and unequal life chances1 (Beck, 2007). Various scholars have tried to overcome methodological nationalism and theorize transnational social

Lutz 583

inequalities as ‘multilocal hierarchies’ (Anthias, 2012), or ‘contradictory social mobility’ (Parreñas, 2001). This covers those migrants who, given their educational attainment and professional skills, belong to the educated middle class in the country of origin; by means of income generation and the return of remittances they leave unemployment and pov- erty behind and maintain their – often middle – class status. In contrast, doing ‘unskilled’ care work in the destination countries often implies low social status, and extensive marginalization in the receiving society, as in most cases diplomas or professional attain- ments are not recognized. This ‘status paradox in migration’ (Nieswand, 2011) is reflected in the simultaneity of downward and upward mobility, where migrants position themselves in the stratification order of the sending and the receiving society (Amelina, 2017: 33). Relationality is a key component of this status paradox. Migrants develop a relational, transnational habitus where trans-border mobility functions as a capital that allows them to translate and convert other forms of capital into each other (Kelly and Lusis, 2006: 836). Studies of transnational inequality, therefore, examine ‘how a rela- tional multilocal setting (which includes localities in the sending and receiving coun- tries) co-produces these specific stratification orders’ (Amelina, 2017: 35).

I distinguish three aspects of TSI:

1. Female care work can be considered as not only a gendered form of capital, implicit in the social construction of femininity and therefore an asset for employ- ment, but also as a gendered obligation – if not burden – interlinked with the moral economy of kin. Unpaid emotional work is not only an essential part of family liability, but also part of waged care work. Amelina (2017: 173) identifies cross-border inequalities as the ‘doing’ of spatialized inequalities, but this ‘doing’ is subject to structural restrictions: the availability of care as a desirable commod- ity at both ends of the care giving–receiving nexus becomes a decisive factor in the quality of life and life chances. Its presence on one side implies its (corporal) absence on the other. Therefore, emotional and care inequality is an implicit aspect of transnational care giving, where the provision of physical care is restricted to the care recipient in the receiving country, while contacts with stay- behind family members are reduced to digital connectivity and temporary visits.

2. A second aspect of transnational inequality – not restricted to care migration alone – is the lack of social protection. As Avato et al. (2010) emphasize, bilateral contracts between sending and receiving states on the portability of social secu- rity rights and payments are rare. The authors stress that South to South migrants are on the bottom of social protection and notice that in particular EU member states have established portability agreements, including guaranteed access to benefits. However, many regulations in the service industries undermine the port- ability of rights even in the EU. So far, only one country – Austria – has an offi- cial recruitment policy for migrant care givers for the elderly (see Bauer and Österle, 2016). In many others, migrant care givers from Eastern Europe can use the freedom of services rule provided by the EU (2006/123/EG) and the assign- ment guideline (96/71/EG) allowing the provision of services as self-employed entrepreneurs or as posted workers. However, these regulations are controversial because 24 hours around the clock work breaches employment standards,

584 Current Sociology Monograph 2 66(4)

the salary is often below the minimum wage of the receiving countries and the posting of migrant care givers as live-ins in private homes by bi-national place- ment agencies has developed into a model that is easily abused. The scheme of ‘posting workers’ – presented to all parties involved as a legal service created by the European Union – in practice is often turned into an illegal staff-leasing agreement (Rossow and Leiber, 2017).

3. A third aspect is what is called the race–migration nexus. It is emphasized that, as in the United States, EU migration policies are marked by institutional racism, creating or reinforcing class-bound and racialized occupational pathways, but that research on this question is scarce and needs improvement (Erel et al., 2016: 1344). As the term ‘race’ in many European care work receiving states – as in other parts of the world (see examples from Asia in this monograph) – tends to be avoided, the race-question in migrant care work is fairly under-explored. With Erel et al., I would argue against the post-racial migration nexus (2016: 1352) which claims that in European migration ‘race’ has become obsolete. On the one hand, it appears that care migrants from Eastern Europe are included on the basis of their shared whiteness and Christianity, but simultaneously they are excluded and ‘othered’ as backward, uncivilized or profiteers or sometimes as members of the ‘Slavic worker race’, a discursive construction from German National Socialism (Lutz, 2011). Further research is needed on this topic.

Conclusion

In this article I have argued that three concepts, the GCCC, the CCC and the TSI, are all equally important for the analysis of specific cases of care migration. The Global Care Chain Concept paved the ground for understanding the asymmetrical global dimensions of care commercialization and the emergence of the care economy; it emphasized that the current market logic is embraced by powerful actors of the global economy, pushing the conversion of care from a prerequisite for a successful life into a fictitious commod- ity. However, the concept omits the analysis of transnational migration as a space of possibility expansion for (middle-class) migrants from countries where economic con- ditions and the enabling of equal life chances have been deteriorating for decades. In contrast, the Care Circulation Concept correctly insists that care chains cannot be reduced to a unilateral relationship with a migrant caregiver and stay-behind-kin care receivers, but that care is mobile and circulated within family networks, dispersed over the globe. This concept highlights the transnational dimension of (material and emo- tional) care, but it forgets that working conditions in the care economy are often precari- ous and produce asymmetrical status positions for (educated) migrants. Finally, the Transnational Social Inequality Concept, in its three dimensions – emotional and care inequality; the absence of adequate social protection; and the racialization and gendered naturalization of care work – illuminates the emergence and co-production of social inequalities in and through transnational space. The status paradox of trans-border mobility engenders the production of specific bi- or multinational stratification orders. The new features of social inequality in transnational space are not only found in put- ting (female) workers into a gendered employment sector, but the gendered nature of

Lutz 585

the relational care-giving-and-receiving nexus characterizes care as a very peculiar activity from the point of view of standards of human need and moral obligation. Still, the TSI concept so far has not adequately taken into account the centrality of ‘care’ and care commitments in transnational relations, where care obligations in the sending and receiving countries are part of the same nexus (Amelina, 2017: 149–150). Again, insights from GCCC and CCC are important to compensate for these gaps. I omitted to mention the role of the ‘ethic of care debate’ in the remit of my article, because it is cur- rently hard to imagine that a new ethics of care, focusing on a new language and a new moral discourse (Weicht, 2015: 214), is on the horizon, however desirable that may be. Nevertheless, it seems important to emphasize in every case study, where and how migrant care work is shaped by moral norms and power structures (religion, politics, economics, culture, etc.) in discourses, practices and institutions – and to highlight the scandal of social discrimination and exploitation and its continued reproduction.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Note

1. Instead of income, ownership or occupational hierarchies, Kreckel (1992) proposes life chances as a yardstick for the scaling of inequality.

References

Ambrosini M (2013) Irregular Migration and Invisible Welfare, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ambrosini M (2016) From ‘illegality’ to tolerance and beyond: Irregular immigration as a selec-

tive and dynamic process. International Migration 54(2) 144–159. Amelina A (2017) Transnationalizing Inequalities in Europe: Sociocultural Boundaries,

Assemblages and Regimes of Intersection. New York: Routledge. Andall J (2000) Gender, Migration and Domestic Service: The Politics of Black Women in Italy.

Ashgate: Aldershot. Anthias F (2012) Transnational mobilities, migration research and intersectionality. Nordic

Journal of Migration Research 2(2): 102–110. Avato J, Koettl J and Sabates-Wheeler R (2010) Social security regimes, global estimates, and

good practices: The status of social protection for international migrants. World Development 38(4) 455–466.

Baldassar L and Merla L (eds) (2014) Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care: Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life. Abingdon: Routledge.

Bauer G and Österle A (2016) Mid and later life care work migration: Patterns of re-organising informal care obligations in Central and Eastern Europe. Journal of Aging Studies 37(2): 81–93.

Beck U (2007) The cosmopolitan condition: Why methodological nationalisms fails. Theory, Culture and Society 24(7/8): 286–290.

Büscher M and Urry J (2011) Introduction: Mobile methods. In: Büscher M, Urry J and Witchger K (eds) Mobile Methods. New York: Routledge.

Carling J, Menjivar C and Schmalzbauer L (2012) Central themes in the study of transnational parenthood. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38(2): 191–217.

586 Current Sociology Monograph 2 66(4)

Coronel FK and Unterreiner F (2007) Increasing the impact of remittances on children’s rights. Philippines paper. UNICEF. Available at: www.unicef.org/policyanalysis/files/Increasing_ the_impact_of_remittances_on_childrens_rights.pdf (accessed 2 August 2017).

Cortés R (2007) Children and women left behind in labor sending countries: An appraisal of social risks. global report on migration and children. Available at: www.childmigration.net/files/ Rosalia_Cortes_07.pdf (accessed 2 August 2017).

Cox R (ed.) (2015) Sisters or Servants? Au Pairs’ Lives in Global Context. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Dayton-Johnson J, Katseli LT, di Mattia A and Xenogiani T (2007) Policy Coherence for Development: Migration and Developing Countries. Paris: Technical Report, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

De Henau J, Himmelweit S, Łapniewska Z and Perrons D (2016) Investing in the Care Economy. A Gender Analysis of Employment Stimulus in Seven OECD Countries. London: International Trade Union Confederation.

Erel U, Murji K and Nahaboo Z (2016) Understanding the contemporary race–migration nexus. Ethnic and Racial Studies 39(8): 1339–1360.

Folbre N (2006) Demanding quality: Worker/consumer coalitions and high-road strategies in the care sector. Politics and Society 34(1): 1–21.

Fraser N (2012) Can society be commodities all the way down? Polanyian reflections on capitalist crisis. Working Paper 18, Fondation Maison de Sciences de l’Homme, Paris.

Fraser N (2013) How feminism became capitalism’s handmaiden – and how to reclaim it. The Guardian 14 October. Available at: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/14/fem- inism-capitalist-handmaiden-neoliberal (accessed 2 August 2017).

Gamburd MR (2000) The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Hochschild AR (2000) Global Care Chains and emotional surplus value. In: Giddens A and Hutton W (eds) On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism. London: Jonathan Cape, pp. 130–146.

Hochschild AR (2003) The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hondagneu-Sotelo P (2001) Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hondagneu-Sotelo P and Avila E (1997) ‘I’m here, but I’m there’: The meanings of Latina trans- national motherhood. Gender and Society 11(5): 548–571.

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2013) Domestic Workers Across the World: Global and Regional Statistics and the Extent of Legal Protection. Geneva: ILO. Available at: www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/–dgreports/–dcomm/–publ/documents/publication/ wcms_173363.pdf (accessed 22 February 2017).

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2015a) ILO Global Estimates on Migrant Workers. Results and Methodology. Special Focus on Migrant Domestic Workers. Geneva: ILO. Available at: www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/documents/publi- cation/wcms_436343.pdf (accessed 22 February 2017).

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2015b) World employment and social outlook. Available at: www.futureofworkhub.info/allcontent/2015/5/19/world-employment-social-outlook-the- changing-nature-of-jobs (accessed 31 July 2017).

Kelly P and Lusis T (2006) Migration and the transnational habitus: Evidence from Canada and the Philippines. Environment and Planning A 38(5): 831–847.

Kofman E (2012) Rethinking care through social reproduction: Articulating circuits of migration. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 19: 142–162.

Lutz 587

Kreckel R (1992) Politische Soziologie der sozialen Ungleichheit. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus.

Krzyżowski Ł (2013) Polscy migranci i ich starzejący się rodzice. Transnarodowy system opieki międzygeneracyjnej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar.

Leon M (ed.) (2014) The Transformation of Care in European Societies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lutz H (2010) Gender in the migratory process. Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(10): 1647–1663. Lutz H (2011) The New Maids: Transnational Women and the Care Economy. London: Zed Books. Lutz H (2017a) Care as a fictitious commodity: Reflections on the intersections of migration, gen-

der and care regimes. Migration Studies 5(3): 356–368. Lutz H (2017b) Euro orphans: The stigmatization of migrant motherhood. In: Ergas Y, Jenson J

and Michel S (eds) Reassembling Motherhood: Procreation and Care in a Globalized World. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 247–268.

Lutz H (2018) Masculinity, care and stay-behind fathers: A postsocialist perspective. Critical Sociology. Epub ahead of print 12 February 2018. DOI: 10.1177/0896920517749707.

Lutz H and Palenga-Möllenbeck E (2012) Care workers, care drain, and care chains: Reflections on care, migration, and citizenship. Social Politics 19(1): 15–37.

Lutz H and Palenga-Möllenbeck E (2014) Care-Migrantinnen im geteilten Europa – Verbindungen und Widersprüche in einem transnationalen Raum. Soziale Welt, Special issue Sonderband 20: 217–231.

Madianou M and Miller D (2012) Migration and the New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia. London: Routledge.

Michel S and Peng I (2012) All in the family? Migrants, nationhood, and care regimes in Asia and North America. Journal of European Social Policy 22(4): 406–418.

Nicholas T (2008) Remittances, education, and family reunification: Transnational strategies of Haitian immigrant families in South Florida. Paper read at the Workshop ‘Transnational par- enthood and children-left-behind’, Oslo, 20–21 February 2008, pp. 149–174.

Nieswand B (2011) Theorising Transnational Migration: The Status Paradox of Migration. New York: Routledge.

Österle A and Bauer G (2016) The legalization of rotational 24-hour care work in Austria: Implications for migrant care workers. Social Politics 23(2): 192–213.

Palenga-Möllenbeck E and Lutz H (2016) Fatherhood and masculinities in post socialist Europe: The challenges of transnational migration. In: Kilkey M and Palenga-Möllenbeck E (eds) Family Life in an Age of Migration and Mobility: Global Perspectives Through the Life Course. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 213–236.

Parreñas RS (2001) Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Parreñas RS (2005) Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Rossow V and Leiber S (2017) Zwischen Vermarktlichung und Europäisierung. Die wachsende Bedeutung transnational agierender Vermittlungsagenturen in der häuslichen Pflege in Deutschland. Sozialer Fortschritt 66(3/4): 285–302.

Samarasinghe V (1998) The feminization of foreign currency earnings: Women’s labor in Sri Lanka. The Journal of Developing Areas 32(Spring): 303–326.

Slaughter AM (2016) The work that makes work possible: The labour of caregivers – often invis- ible and undervalued – is crucial for economic growth and gender equality. The Atlantic, 23 March. Available at: www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/unpaid-caregiv- ers/474894 (accessed 2 August 2017).

588 Current Sociology Monograph 2 66(4)

Solari C (2017) On the Shoulders of Grandmothers: Gender, Migration and Post-Soviet State- State Building. London and New York: Routledge.

Teo Y (2014) Not everyone has maids: Work–life balance policies and their class-differential effect in Singapore. In: XVIII ISA Congress of Sociology, session selection, The Global Migration of Gendered Care Work, Yokohama.

Urbańska S (2015) Matka Polka na odległość. Z doświadczeń migracyjnych robotnic 1989–2010. Toruń: Wydawnictwo UMK.

Van Haer N and Sørensen N (eds) (2003) The Migration Development Nexus. Geneva: IOM Weicht B (2015) The Meaning of Care: The Social Construction of Care for Elderly People.

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Williams F (2010) Themes and concepts in migration, gender and care. Social Policy and Society

9(3): 385–396. Yeates N (2009) Globalising Care Economies and Migrant Workers: Explorations in Global Care

Chains. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Yeates N and Pillinger J (2013) Human Resources for Health Migration: Global Policy Responses,

Initiatives, and Emerging Issues. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Author biography

Helma Lutz is a sociologist and chair of women’s and gender studies in social sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She has a long-standing record of research in the field of gender, migration, care and intersectionality studies and has carried out research projects in vari- ous locations in Europe. Her publications include 18 books and more than 100 articles in journals and books published in six languages.

Résumé L’une des caractéristiques de la marchandisation globale des soins est l’externalisation du travail de soin aux migrants. L’objectif de cet article est d’enquêter sur les réponses théoriques à l’incorporation des travailleuses migrantes aux régimes transnationaux de soins. A travers une description de la portée du travail des migrantes et de l’économie globale de soins, je résumerai les défis qu’induisent ce phénomène et les dénominateurs communs que présentent les migrations des soignantes à l’échelle mondiale. Je discuterai de la même manière trois concepts relatifs à l’impact de la migration pour les migrantes soignantes et pour celles qui restent dans leur lieu d’origine. Le premier concept est celui de Chaîne Globale de Soins, d’importance particulière pour l’éducation transnationale. Le deuxième est la Circulation des Soins. De sens différents, les deux concepts apportent un éclairage sur les caractéristiques contradictoires de la migration de soins. Je défendrai ainsi la nécessité d’incorporer un troisième concept : la théorie de l’Inégalité Sociale Transnationale. Ce concept souligne la position contradictoire des migrantes soignantes pour comprendre les nouvelles caractéristiques asymétriques de la distribution globale des ressources. Pris dans l’ensemble, ces concepts sont à considérer comme des outils utiles pour analyser les similitudes et les différences d’une ample gamme de cas concrets. Beaucoup d’exemples dans cet article concernent la migration des soins en Europe.

Lutz 589

Mots-clés Migration des soins, chaînes de soins, circulation des soins, inégalités sociales transnationales, genre, inégalité émotionnelle

Resumen Una de las características de la mercantilización global de los cuidados es la externalización del trabajo de atención a los migrantes. El objetivo de este artículo es investigar las respuestas teóricas a la incorporación de las trabajadoras migrantes a regímenes transnacionales de cuidados. Tras una descripción del alcance del trabajo de los migrantes y la economía de la global de los cuidados, resumiré los desafíos que plantea este fenómeno y los denominadores comunes que presentan las migraciones de cuidadoras a escala mundial. Discutiré asimismo tres conceptos relacionados con el impacto de la migración para las cuidadoras migrantes y para sus quienes se quedan en el lugar de origen. El primer concepto es la Cadena Global de Cuidados, de particular importancia para la crianza transnacional. El segundo es la Movilidad de los Cuidados. En sentidos diferentes, ambos conceptos arrojan luz sobre las características contradictorias de la migración de los cuidados. Defenderé así la necesidad de incorporar un tercer concepto: la teoría de la Desigualdad Social Transnacional. Este concepto subraya la posición contradictoria de las cuidadoras migrantes para comprender las nuevas características asimétricas de la distribución global de recursos. Tomados en conjunto, estos conceptos se consideran herramientas útiles para analizar las similitudes y diferencias de una amplia gama de casos concretos. Muchos ejemplos empleados en este trabajo remiten a la migración de los cuidados a Europa.

Palabras clave Migración de los cuidados, cadenas de cuidados, circulación de los cuidados, desigualdad social transnacional, género, desigualdad emocional