Global Care Chains

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Global Care Chains is a concept and an analytical tool set in the intersection of Migration Studies, Gender Studies and International Political Economy describing “a series of personal links between people across the globe based on paid or unpaid work of caring”. It highlights the resulting unequal distribution of care with the surplus care being received in the end while there is a deficit in the bottom

The concept was established by Arlie Russell Hochschild and has since its introduction been elaborated on by several scholars. In a typical situation, a family with two working parents, living in a richer country hires a migrant nanny. The migrant woman, having her own children, hires a nanny to take care of her children in her home country. In turn, the children of this nanny are taken care of by another family member, typically an older sister or female relative. Hochschild's work on global care chains draws on Rhacel Salazar Parrenas preceding and closely related work on the international division of reproductive labor.

A typical example of what constitutes a global care chain according to Hochschild's conception. To the left is the state of three families prior to the migration of the care labor. The right part shows, how as a result of the migrating care labor, there will be a surplus care in the top of the chain and a deficit of care in the bottom of the chain

Global care chains constitute a transfer of emotions as well as of labor. The transfer of care results in a care deficit in the bottom of the chain and a care surplus in the top. In addition, the monetary value attained from the work decreases down the chain and the last step with another family member assuming care is typically unpaid. Both the migrant mother and their children suffer intense loss while the employer parents derive benefits in form of better family-work balance, and importantly their children receive surplus love

Care workers are often in a relationship of dependency to their employer due to their family’s economic reliance on remittances, their lack of social networks in their work context and the precariousness of their work situation such as lack of legality or formalisation. This can often result in exploitative relationships where the employer forces the care worker to work longer hours, take a below market salary or perform tasks not initially agreed upon

As an analytical tool, global care chain analysis focuses on networks of transnational socioeconomic relationships. With its roots in global network analysis, it prompts investigation of “tangible mechanisms, structural outcomes and empirical impacts”. while avoiding merely describing events as sealed of occurrences on the one hand and the limitations of macro structuralist perspectives on the other<.

In explaining the transfer of care, Hochschild draws on a Freudian notion of displacement by which the caregiver, in lacking the original target for his/her love, directs the emotion towards a new subject. In this way emotions are redistributed from their original object, which in this case would be that nanny’s own child, and is directed towards the child of the employer. Simply looking at a nanny caring for a child, it might appear as an isolated and unique interpersonal relationship. However, looking at the event in isolation hides its redistributive function where the emotion is diverted from someone else. The separation causes distress both on part on the children and the migrating mother.

Global Care Chains

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