Global Care Chains

Abstract

The global care chain approach conceptualizes how care and domestic services are provided through chains of feminized and racialized migrant labor. The value of care labor is determined within global capital and patriarchal systems that devalue carework generally, as well as determine the value of workers more specifically through spatial and ethnic hierarchies. Developments in the global care chain approach have extended its application beyond domestic labor to include more skilled and institutional based workers, such as nurses, and to more masculine service roles, such as handymen. Further research needs to push the analytical connection between the feminist demand to expose and address systematic intersectional vulnerabilities shaped by gender, race, region, religion etc., and mainstream economic analysis of the current global capitalist system, which tends to underplay the significance of carework and the role of gendered and racialized labor in its provision.