ABSTRACT
Drawing on the concept of social reproduction and its application by feminist scholars since the 1960s, this chapter explores the intersection of work and mothering while tending to the simultaneously shifting and persistent ideological and material conditions that accompany the work of those who mother. To do this, the chapter focuses on two key issues that shape, for many, the labour of contemporary motherhood. The first is the transition away from welfare toward workfare. The second is the growing, global reliance on migrant care workers, and the bureaucratic regimes in place to ensure the availability of their labour. Although seemingly distinct, both of these examples correspond to the state’s diminished support of women’s (socially defined) reproductive labour in the wake of wide-scale economic transformation, corresponding to neoliberal structural adjustment, and the concurrent and accelerated commodification of that labour.
