ABSTRACT
Feminization of migration has emerged as a common livelihood strategy, and remittances have become one of the largest sources of development, well-being of families, everyday necessities, and human and capital investment. Millions of women from poor countries increasingly cross the globe and work as nannies to alleviate poverty and meet the basic needs of their families, particularly the needs of children. Nannies from the global South bring their employer families in Europe and the USA real maternal affection, no doubt enhanced by the heartbreaking absence of their own children in the poor countries they leave behind. For nannies from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, it is a common pattern to labor in multiple countries of Asia or the Middle East before moving to work in Europe or other parts of the West. Poor women in the global South are forced to make such heartbreaking and paradoxical decisions, essentially leaving their families in order to save them.
