ABSTRACT
The global economy has produced a great many “people out of place” whose citizenship rights have been complicated by their migration. A growing proportion of those migrating internationally are women, particularly as part of what might be called “globalized social reproduction,” the counterpart to globalized production (Truong 1996: 29). Earlier in this century, most social reproduction1 needs in developed states such as child care, elderly care, cooking, laundry, and housecleaning were supplied by private households, especially by women who carried out these tasks as full-time, unpaid work. To some extent, the welfare state offered support, even while private households remained the primary locus for social reproductive activity. However, in the late twentieth century, women in developed states joined the formal economy in larger numbers, just as neoliberal economic policies began to dismantle the welfare state. Within this context, many middle-and upper-class families turned to the market-and to “importing” labor internationally-in order to meet their social reproduction needs. The resulting “trade in domestic workers” (Heyzer, à Nijeholt, and Weerakoon 1994) involves massive flows of female migrants from less developed states to more developed states and a new “international division of reproductive labor” (Parreñas 2001).
