Gendered migrations and the globalisation of social reproduction and care: new dialogues and directions

In the past decade, a large number of studies have examined the globalisation of gendered migration, especially through the expansion and extension of women’s reproductive labour. The concept of global chains of care has rapidly been adopted as an explanation of the transnational linkages between Northern societies with care defi cits and poorer Southern societies exporting their labour. At the same time there has been a revival of interest in social reproduction and its globalisation. Though much writing using these conceptual frameworks recognises the diversity of sites in which they occur, and to a lesser extent, the various agents and institutions of reproductive labour, it then proceeds to focus almost exclusively on the domestic and the household domain.1 Such a restricted positioning of migrants tends to produce an analytical framework based primarily on globalised households within the contemporary capitalist economy. It gives the impression that the connections between households are unmediated, or only weakly mediated by immigration and employment policies, residence regulations and welfare regimes.