Defamilialization of Whom? Re-Thinking Defamilialization in the Light of Global Care Chains and the Transnational Circulation of Care

Degavre, Florence; Merla, Laura

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-52099-9_13

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Since the 1960s, feminist movements in different continents have highlighted the issue of unpaid women's work, invisible, for the "others", in the name of nature, love or maternal duty (Kergoat, 2000; see also : Pedro, 2013;Bhattacharya, 2017). Feminist researchers have theorized on "domestic work", deconstructing what is work-paid and unpaidand the male bias attached to it, domestic labour, paid and unpaid care (Benería, 1979;Combes & Devreux, 1992;Souza Lobo, 1992;Folbre, ;Razavi, 2007;Salazar et al, 2012;Laugier, 2015;Degavre & Merla, 2016). Intense debates have taken place on the patriarchal and "domestic mode of production" (Delphy, 1970), on the political economy of social reproduction and the constructed separation between "production" and "reproduction" (Benería, 1979(Benería, , 1998Combes 1991;Devreux, 1995;Mackintosh, 1977).…”

Section: Social Reproduction: a Powerful Concept For A Feminist Analy...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Reproduction: A Key Issue for Feminist Solidarity Economy

Hillenkamp

Verschuur

2021

Gender, Development and Social Change

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The current organization of social reproduction, based on unequal gender, class and race relations, on oppression and dispossession, is the condition for accumulation in the globalized capitalist system. It is also, increasingly, a terrain for struggles and social transformations. We define social reproduction as all the activities, social relations and institutions that are necessary for the reproduction of life, today and for future generations. This definition is enriched by the contributions of the practices and

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Section: Social Reproduction: a Powerful Concept For A Feminist Analy...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Reproduction: A Key Issue for Feminist Solidarity Economy

Hillenkamp

Verschuur

2021

Gender, Development and Social Change

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“…However, European states' transnational practices in the area of care are deeply asymmetrical. Focusing on migrants from the Global South, Degavre and Merla (2016) showed that migrant women are often excluded from accessing European societies' care systems to support their own transnational family care needs The reasons are two-fold. First, the workers' precarious positioning on the secondary labour market as migrants -many of whom are on temporary and circular visas -doing low-skilled work largely disqualifies them from accessing many state supports.…”

Section: Transnational Families and (Social) Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, while states may operate transnationally to solve their care crises, the transnational care responsibilities of migrant care workers are largely unrecognised, generating inequalities between migrants and non-migrants, and especially among the women who are most engaged in transnational care giving (Williams 2018). Degavre and Merla's (2016) argument was developed in relation to migrants from the Global South. They acknowledged that for mobile European Union (EU) citizens, including those engaged in care work, who migrate under European Free Movement provisions, several measures in particular tend to facilitate the transnational circulation of family care.…”

Section: Transnational Families and (Social) Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Key developments and future prospects in the study of transnational families

Merla¹,

Kilkey²,

Wilding³

et al. 2021

Research Handbook on the Sociology of the Family

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Today, the terminology of transnational families is common in research, and increasingly appears in public and political debates as well (e.g., COFACE 2012). This term is, however, relatively new, and its use both reflects and supports a wider shift in migration studies that began at the turn of the Millennium and that has been called the 'transnational turn'. During the mid-1990s, and based on the observation that family members regularly engage in transnational practices across national borders, anthropologists Linda Basch, Nina Glick-Schiller, and Cristina Szanton-Blanc proposed a reconceptualisation of the dominant representation of migrants as 'uprooted' from their country of origin; rather, they advocated conceiving of migrants as 'transmigrants' who maintain multiple links and connections with their home societies (Basch et al. 1994;Glick Schiller et al. 1992;Schiller et al. 1995). Their approach was widely endorsed by migration scholars, and inspired a wave of social and political science research highlighting the importance of economic, cultural, political, religious, and social transnational dynamics (Vertovec 2009) and transnational social fields that connect sending and receiving societies (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2007;Levitt and Jaworsky 2007). Transnationalism in this context is defined as 'a social process in which migrants establish social fields that cross geographic, cultural, and political borders' (Glick Schiller et al. 1992, p. ix). Thus, migration is no longer conceived of as a one-way movement from one country to another, and national belonging is no longer seen as an either-or scenario. This conceptualisation has been further fuelled by the development and democratisation of transportation and communication technologies. These technologies have (under certain conditions) facilitated mobility and connectedness, which can be seen as another transformation that has simultaneously led to what has been coined the 'mobility turn' in social sciences (Sheller and Urry 2006;Urry 2000Urry , 2007.Although, as Vertovec (2009, p. 61) noted, '[t]he provenance of most everyday migrant transnationalism is within families', familial transnational practices had been largely neglected in mainstream transnationalism scholarship, which considered them as 'weak' forms of transnational engagement, as opposed to the 'stronger' forms that take place in the 'public' sphere (Gardner and Grillo 2002;Legall 2005). In this context, feminist scholarship has played a key role in illuminating the issue of female migration, and in bringing the topic of family migration onto the centre stage (Parreñas 2000). This scholarship challenged the then common bias in migration studies that characterised men as drivers of migration and women as followers. These studies showed that large numbers of women from the Global South migrate alone to the Global North in pursuit of better economic prospects, and highlighted how the absence of mothers can pose challenges for their non-migrant children and wider communities. The term

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“…This refers to the institutional contexts and national and international policies and regulations that both facilitate and constrain, shape and reshape, the practices of transnational care (see also Merla 2014). This project exposes inequalities and power dynamics within and across transnational families (Amelina 2017;Dreby & Atkins 2010;Gonzálves Torralbo 2016), and ultimately raises the question of how governments and policy makers can recognize and support those families (Degavre & Merla 2016;COFACE 2012;Böcker & Hunter 2017). Indeed, the transnational care literature combines anthropological and sociological perspectives with a social policy lens to emphasise the institutional contexts that help shape the circulation of care among families across borders.…”

Section: Situated Transnationalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here, we come full circle to migrant care workers; a group often treated as the paradigmatic case in research on 'stratified reproduction'. Thus, research highlights that their transnational care responsibilities are largely unrecognised within migration and welfare regimes, generating inequalities between migrants and non-migrants, and especially among the women who are most engaged in transnational care-giving (Degavre & Merla 2016;Williams 2018).…”

Section: Situated Transnationalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to the Special Issue “Transnational care: Families confronting borders”

Merla¹,

Kilkey²,

Baldassar³

2020

JFamRes

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In this article, we introduce the key themes of our Special Issue on "Transnational care: families confronting borders". Central to this collection is the question of how family relations and solidarities are impacted by the current scenario of closed borders and increasingly restrictive migration regimes. This question is examined more specifically through the lens of care dynamics within transnational families and their (re-)configurations across diverse contexts marked by "immobilizing regimes of migration". We begin by presenting a brief overview of key concepts in the transnational families and caregiving literature that provides a foundation for the diverse cases explored in the articles, including refugees and asylum seekers in Germany and Finland, Polish facing Brexit in the UK, Latin American migrants transiting through Mexico, and restrictionist drifts in migration policies in Australia, Belgium and the UK. Drawing on this rich work, we identify two policy tools; namely temporality and exclusion, which appear to be particularly salient features of immobilizing regimes of migration that significantly influence care-related mobilities. We conclude with a discussion of how immobilizing regimes are putting transnational family solidarities in crisis, including in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, gripping the globe at the time of writing.

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Defamilialization of Whom? Re-Thinking Defamilialization in the Light of Global Care Chains and the Transnational Circulation of Care

Cited by 12 publications

References 29 publications

Social Reproduction: A Key Issue for Feminist Solidarity Economy

Social Reproduction: A Key Issue for Feminist Solidarity Economy

Key developments and future prospects in the study of transnational families

Introduction to the Special Issue “Transnational care: Families confronting borders”

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