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As women in developed countries enter the labour market in greater numbers they create an increasing demand for domestic and care labour which, combined with the deficient response of public institutions, has created the so-called "care crisis". The care crisis, which opens up opportunities mainly for women, has been a factor in the feminization of migratory processes. The need to sustain households on a daily basis has created global care chains with cross-border dimensions.
As Mar Garcia, a researcher with the Gender, Migration, and Development Programme at UN-INSTRAW explains, “For example, a European family can decide to hire a migrant woman to be in charge of a relative who needs constant care. At the same time, the woman has migrated to ensure sufficient income for her family and has left her children in the country of origin under the care of her mother or of another woman hired to provide this service.”
Realizing that the formation of these chains is one of the least visible results of the present feminization process of migrations, UN-INSTRAW has initiated a Project “Building Networks: Latin American Women and Global Care Chains” in Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Spain.
The project, which is financed by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), aims to formulate proposals that will place the issue of care on the development agenda. The project aims to give value to work in care services and to gender equality in the provision of care.
The first phase of the project will generate data on the role of female migration originating in three countries in Latin America (Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) and on the effects of the social reorganization of care services on women migrants in two destination countries (Chile and Spain). The second phase will analyze the dynamics and functioning of global care chains and the effect that the migration of women has in the social organization of care in their countries of origin.
In addition, the project aims to disseminate and raise awareness about the social importance of labour and global care chains, as well as the perspective of women migrants concerning the need for change in the social organization of care.
“Analyzing the migration-development link as the main issue of global care chains allows us to raise new questions and offers an analysis perspective that gives priority to the role of care within development models,” stated Mar Garcia.
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As women in developed countries enter the labour market in greater numbers they create an increasing demand for domestic and care labour which, combined with the deficient response of public institutions, has created the so-called "care crisis". The care crisis, which opens up opportunities mainly for women, has been a factor in the feminization of migratory processes. The need to sustain households on a daily basis has created global care chains with cross-border dimensions.