ABSTRACT
Care work, currently the most important labour market for female migrants worldwide, includes childcare, care of the sick and the elderly and domestic work in the households of private employers. Internationally, this field is referred to as “domestic and care work.” These types of work, called “reproductive labor” in the Marxist theory tradition, have already been subject of controversial discussion in the 19th century, when a hierarchically gendered dichotomy between “productive” and “reproductive” labour became the characteristic of bourgeois society. From that time onwards care work was coded as female gendered.
Today, the commercialization and privatization of care and the expansion of the care market are exacerbating social inequalities among the recipients of care, which are reflective of class and income hierarchies prevalent in society. The living and working conditions of female migrant care workers are indicative of a paradoxical kind of social mobility: many are highly educated and their migration entails a care gap within their families; their countries of origin lose educational and care capital; at the same time, their remittances fund not only the education of their children, health care for relatives of every age but also the consumption needs of the family members they leave behind.
