In this article, we discuss a case study that deals with the care chain phenomenon and focuses on the question of how Poland and the Ukraine as sending countries and Poland as a receiving country are affected and deal with female migrant domestic workers. We look at the ways in which these women organize care replacement for their families left behind and at those families’ care strategies. As public discourse in both countries is reacting to the feminization of migration in a form that specifically questions the social citizenship obligations of these women, we also look at the media portrayal of the situation of nonmigrating children. Finally, we explore how different aspects of citizenship matter in transnational care work migration movements.

In this article, we deal with contradictions and paradoxes of the German policies on migration and domestic care work. Although the demand for care workers in private homes is increasing, the German government has turned a blind eye to the topic of migrant care workers. As a result of the mismatch between demand and restrictive policies, a large sector of undeclared care work has come into being. This veritable ‘twilight zone’ can be coined an ‘open secret’ as it is the topic of extensive discussions among the populace and in the media. We will address various discrepancies in the debate on migrant domestic work in Germany by providing a view from multiple actors’ perspectives. Examining the intersections of gendered migration and care regimes, we assert that undeclared care migration is an integral part of German welfare state policies, which can be characterised as compliance and complicity.

In this article the authors discuss their analytical concept, developed through and for the exploration of forms and dynamics of transnational labour and care arrangements in domestic work migration. Firstly, on the institutional level they highlight the interplay between three national regimes (of migration, gender and welfare/care) to clarify the specific dynamic of transnational care migration. Secondly, based on intersectionality analysis, the institutional level is linked to the meso and micro levels of networks/organizations and individuals, to explore how these institutional regimes act as an opportunity/obstruction structure -either as a source of assets or a cause of marginalization, or both. Thirdly, by adopting the dual transnational perspective of both the sending and the receiving society, transnational social spaces are shown as the migrants' action frame of reference. Finally, a cross-national comparative study of two cases of transnational East-West migration (from Ukraine to Poland and from Poland to Germany) can provide new insights into the relationship between transnational migration, gender and care regimes on the one hand, and the migrants' arrangements for labour and care on the other.

Research over the last decade and more, has documented a resurgence of paid domestic and care labour (that is, work performed for pay in private households, such as household cleaning and maintenance and care for elders/disabled/children) across the Global North.1Much of the research has revealed the increasing reliance onmigrant, as opposed to home-state, domestic workers, and it has been suggested (Lutz, 2007: 4) that domestic and care work has contributed more than any other sector of the labour market to one of the key features of the ‘age of migration’ (Castles and Miller, 2009) – its feminisation. At the same time though, as Linton's (2002) research on immigrant-niche formation in the USA suggests, the availability of immigrants in itself, has probably contributed to the growth of the sector.