Rethinking care through social reproduction: Articulating circuits of migration

Care has come to dominate much feminist research on globalized migrations and the transfer of labour from the South to the North, while the older concept of reproduction had been pushed into the background but is now becoming the subject of debates on the commodification of care in the household and changes in welfare state policies. This article argues that we could achieve a better understanding of the different modalities and trajectories of care in the reproduction of individuals, families, and communities, both of migrant and non-migrant populations by articulating the diverse circuits of migration, in particular that of labour and the family. In doing this, I go back to the earlier North American writing on racialized minorities and migrants and stratified social reproduction. I also explore insights from current Asian studies of gendered circuits of migration connecting labour and marriage migrations as well as the notion of global householding that highlights the gender politics of social reproduction operating within and beyond households in institutional and welfare architectures. In contrast to Asia, there has relatively been little exploration in European studies of the articulation of labour and family migrations through the lens of social reproduction. However, connecting the different types of migration enables us to achieve a more complex understanding of care trajectories and their contribution to social reproduction.

Volume 19, Issue 1, Spring 2012, Special Issue: Transnational Care in Europe - Changing Formations of Citizenship, Family and Generation