The project “Building networks: Latin American women in the global care chains” is being implemented with financing received from AECID (Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo – Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation).
Why concentrate on global care chains? Why do we examine care from a transnational perspective? Why should we consider migration and place care at the center of our focus? Why do we use an approach that reflects on research as a tool for intervention?
From an institutional perspective, global care chains have been identified as a strategic position to analyze the link between international labour migration and development processes from a gender perspective. Therefore, it’s a question of responding to that tension in order to understand the role played by migration in global development and realize that the promotion of gender equality is an integral component of development. Consequently, such analysis will initiate the creation of public policy recommendations that will highlight potential beneficial impacts and identify risks while opening spaces for migrants (particularly women) to be heard as actors of development processes who both build and benefit from these links and thus should also be able to decide their course. In this sense, the final objective of the project is not limited to “understanding”, but to “proposing”. In other words, the results of the research will instigate a call to action and above all will utilize demands made throughout the political dialogue which serves as an integral part of the project from the very beginning.
¿Why conduct research with a political dialogue component? From a strict institutional framework, given the applied nature of the research that UN-INSTRAW carries out, the knowledge derived from it should be oriented towards the promotion of change. This applicability should be reflected in this project in two concrete ways:
Through the formulation of public policy recommendations as products of the research, which address the circumstances of migrants in origin as well as in destination countries. However, the aim is that such recommendations will not exclusively be the result of a technical evaluation carried out by researchers, but rather that they will result from a participative process carried out with the stakeholders involved in global care chains (further ahead we will develop the criteria which categorizes which actors are considered relevant and/or pertinent for each context).
By means of a dynamic process, as much as possible in relation to time and available resources, demanding processes in connection with the social organization of care, in countries of origin (Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) as well as in destination countries (Chile and Spain). The actions to be undertaken completely depend on the result of the mapping of actors, which while being diagnostic, will show us the possible margin and will provide a sense and direction to the activities that should be planned.
The introduction of the political dialogue component originates from the conceptual framework that guides the work of the United Nations system in connection with human development processes which focuses on human rights. This focus is based, from a normative viewpoint, on international human rights norms and is oriented from an operational viewpoint, towards the promotion and protection of human rights. Therefore its purpose is to analyze the inequalities found at the core of development problems and to correct discriminatory practices and the unjust distribution of power which hinder progress in development. From this perspective, one of the main objectives of development projects is to identify actors deprived of rights and those responsible for ensuring that these rights be met. Those responsible must be accountable to their obligations by strengthening the capacities of beneficiaries so that they may claim their rights. Within this project, UN-INSTRAW is especially committed to the strengthening of the capacities of the beneficiaries of rights.
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