ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the significance and shifting dynamics of Asia's transnational domestic workforce and the employment restrictions that institutionalize remittances as a defining feature of transnational labor. It argues that migrant women are exploited within the households where they work and across the transnational labor market plane. Labor migration has become a significant economic policy objective of several poorer nations in Southeast Asia and South Asia; it is promoted by the governments of those countries with the aim of generating export income in the form of workers' remittances. The 'global care chain' is entwined with the labor migration project that has as its object the generation of remittances, which is contingent upon labor-importing states restricting the duration of migrant domestic workers' employment. The Macau administration is proposing to recruit domestic workers from China. The Philippines government has made a concerted effort to secure minimum wage agreements to bolster the earning potential of migrant domestic workers.
