Embedded Files
Helpful prior knowledge and learning objectives
Helpful prior knowledge and learning objectives
Helpful prior learning:
Section 1.1.1 The economy and you, which explains what an economy is and how it is relevant to students’ lives
Section 1.1.2 The embedded economy, which explains the relationship between the economy and society and Earth’s systems
Section 1.3.6 Households, markets, state and commons, which explains four provisioning institutions in the economy and their interconnection
Section 1.3.7 Care in the economy, which explains the importance of care in the economy, the types of care, and why care is undervalued
Section 2.1.1 The household as a system, which describes households, the basic relationships of household members, and the connection between the household and the rest of the economy.
Section 2.3.1 Intrahousehold bargaining power, which explains the factors that impact the relative power of household members
Section 2.3.2 Households and gender inequalities, which explains the reinforcing feedback loops associated with women’s unequal care responsibilities
Section S.1 What are systems?, which explains what a system is, the importance of systems boundaries, the difference between open and closed systems and the importance of systems thinking
Section S.2 Systems thinking patterns, which outlines the core components of systems thinking: distinctions (thing/other), systems (part/whole), relationships (action/reaction), and perspectives (point/view)
Learning objectives:
explain the causes and consequences of global care chains
Maria, a 34-year-old mother of five from rural Philippines has long farmed with her family, but climate change made their income unpredictable. To earn more household income, Maria moved to Hong Kong to work as a nanny, earning HK$8,500 per month, roughly minimum wage, though care workers are excluded from minimum wage laws. She sends most of her income back home to the Philippines to help her family meet their needs and to pay another woman to help her family with domestic work. Although her income supports the family, her absence saddens everyone and increases care work for other household members.
Maria is part of a global care chain, where caregivers from poorer countries migrate to wealthier ones, affecting many lives across borders. Understanding the factors that lead Maria and others like her to migrate to care for others around the world is crucial to ensuring that carers are supported and valued.
Figure 1. Statue Square in Hong Kong is a place where Filipino domestic workers meet regularly to share stories and build community far from home (Credit: Mcyjerry CC BY-SA 3.0)
What are global care chains and what causes them?
What are global care chains and what causes them?
Global care chains involve links between households globally, based on paid or unpaid care work. These chains can be complex, with multiple caregivers and receivers, affecting many lives as you can see in Maria’s case where a chain of care is created in more than one country.
Global care chains are driven by several related factors:
care crisis in high-income countries: As more women in high-income countries take paid work, demand for care and domestic help increases. A care crisis has emerged because paid care work is needed, but undervalued in these societies. Caregivers are overworked and underpaid, making care jobs undesirable, so many paid care positions go unfilled. Countries like Japan and Germany, with ageing populations and care shortages, often rely on migrant caregivers to fill the gap.
local and global inequalities: High levels of poverty, income and gender inequalities and lack of social services in lower-income countries force women to seek higher-paying jobs in other countries, as seen in Maria’s case. Figure 3 shows per person gross domestic product (GDP per capita), which is an indicator of global income differences. Caregivers, often women, tend to migrate from lower-income (green) to higher income (dark blue) countries.
globalisation and state migration policies: Globalisation increases the movement of goods, services, people, ideas, and money worldwide. Improved transportation and communication makes it easier for caregivers to migrate. Social networks provide helpful information and it is also easier to send money back home.
In response to their care crises, some countries have made it easier for caregivers to migrate. These countries offer caregivers work visas, integration courses and faster permanent residency. For example, Japan has agreements with Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam to attract care workers as its population ages, a shift from its previous restricted immigration policies.
Figure 4. Some countries are making it easier to become a permanent resident or citizen to encourage migrants to provide care work
(Credit: JouWatch CC BY-SA 2.0)
What are the consequences of global care chains?
What are the consequences of global care chains?
Global care chains have both positive and negative effects on migrant care workers' home and host countries.
Impact on home country households: When women migrate for care work, they leave their children or relatives behind, relying on others for care. For example, UNICEF estimates that 2-9 million Filipino children are left behind by migrating parents (not just mothers). This has emotional and social consequences. ‘Left-behind children’ may experience emotional distress, reduced parental guidance, and less direct care and indirect care (Section 2.1.3). Extended family members or paid caregivers may take over care work, but the parents’ bond is hard to replace.
Money inflows and care drains in home countries: Migrant caregivers usually send money home, called remittances, which is an important source of income for many families. Remittances improve living standards, fund education, and provide better healthcare. In countries like El Salvador and Kyrgyzstan, remittances exceed 20% of GDP (Figure 5).
On the other hand, countries losing many migrating caregivers may experience a local care drain. In the Philippines, where remittances from overseas workers are crucial for the economy, there are also significant shortages of workers in local healthcare and social services.
Figure 5. Remittances as a share of GDP
(Credit: Our World in Data)
Exploitation and vulnerability of migrant carers: Oxfam reports that about 20% of the 67 million domestic workers worldwide are migrants. Mostly women from marginalised groups, these women are pushed to work abroad by low incomes and lack of opportunities. These women are vulnerable in their host countries too (Figure 6) due to low pay, lack of legal protection and social benefits, and integration challenges. For example, many Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong and Singapore do not get a salary for the first 10 months of work because they have to pay recruitment agencies high fees for their job placement.
Legal migration to work in high-income countries may not be possible, so many women migrate illegally. This makes them even more vulnerable, because they cannot seek legal protection if mistreated. Legal migrants may be sponsored by their employers, which can also make them dependent and vulnerable. In some countries in the Middle East, the kafala system ties workers to their employers, preventing job changes without permission. Many workers in these systems do not report mistreatment for fear of losing their job or being sent back to their home country.
Figure 6. Domestic workers – among the most exploited workers in the world (Credit: Oxfam)
Social impacts in receiving countries: Migrant caregivers enable many households to balance paid work and family care responsibilities. With help from migrant caregivers, more women in high-income countries can pursue careers, supporting gender equality. However, global care chains raise ethical concerns. Using migrant workers, often marginalised women of colour, for domestic work worsens income inequalities. People in households with higher incomes are able to earn even more by outsourcing household work to others, usually poorly paid. These relationships reinforce wider social inequalities in high income countries and global inequalities.
Global care chains are complex, with both positive and negative impacts on host and home countries. While they can provide higher incomes for caregivers and support families in high-income countries, they create challenges for families left behind and can make migrant caregivers extremely vulnerable to exploitation. Understanding global care chains is key to addressing the ethical and practical challenges of how we care in our households around the world.
Activity 2.3.3
Activity 2.3.3
Concept: Regeneration
Skills: Thinking skills (critical thinking, transfer)
Time: 25 minutes
Type: Individual, pairs and/or group
Option 1: Push and pull factors
When discussing migration, social scientists often use the terms push factors and pull factors. Push factors are negative conditions in a migrant’s home country that lead them to migrate. Pull factors are relatively more positive factors in a host country that attract migrant workers.
Look back in this section at the various factors that cause global care chains.
Which factors would you classify as push factors and which would you classify as pull factors?
What would be the consequences for global care chains if these push and pull factors changed? Think about the impacts on all the stakeholders involved.
Option 2: Discussion
Using a discussion strategy you are familiar with in your class or school, consider the following questions and discuss them in pairs, small groups or as a whole class:
To what extent can global care chains be considered an exploitation of people’s care work?
What strategies, from both sending and receiving countries, could enhance the positive benefits of global care migration, and lessen the negative consequences?
Note: you will learn more about these strategies in Subtopic 2.4, but you can already brainstorm appropriate strategies if you consider the positive and negative consequences of global care chains.
Ideas for longer activities and projects are listed in Subtopic 2.5 Taking Action
Checking for understanding
Checking for understanding
Further exploration
Further exploration
Gender Awareness & Public Policy | Feminist Economics Part 4 - Feminist economist Jayati Ghosh explains gender is so important to consider in countries’ economic policies. The first part of the video discusses gender differences in migration in global care chains. Difficulty level: medium
Undervaluing the work of care - A Care Matters podcast with Professor Nancy Folbre, Professor Shereen Hussein and Dr. Naomi Lightman where they have a wide-ranging discussion about the tensions of markets providing care, the role of undervalued care in global care chains, and the difficulty of measuring the value of care considering its large positive social impacts. Difficulty level: medium
What is the kafala system? - An overview of the kafala system by the Council on Foreign Relations. Difficulty level: medium
Interactive from Migrant-rights.org - a short, engaging exercise that explores the hardships that migrant workers in countries with a kafala system can face. Though the interactive does not focus specifically on care workers, they face the same difficulties in this system. Difficulty level: easy
International Labor Organization (ILO) topic site on domestic workers - Includes information and news on the conditions and legal developments related to domestic workers globally. Difficulty level: medium
Sources
Sources
Coffey, C. et al. (2020). Time to Care: Unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis. Oxfam International. https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/time-to-care-unpaid-and-underpaid-care-work-and-the-global-inequality-crisis-620928/
Dowling, E. (2021). The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End it? London: Verso Books.
Gammage, S., & Stevanovic, N. (2018). Gender, migration and care deficits: what role for the sustainable development goals? Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45(14), 2600–2620. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1456751.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell (2000), “Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value”, in Hutton, W. and Giddens, A. (eds) On The Edge: Living with Global Capitalism. London: Jonathan Cape.
Robinson, K. (2022). What is the kafala system? Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-kafala-system#:~:text=It%20has%20been%20used%20in,don't%20amount%20to%20abolition.
Unicef (2023). Children affected by migration in ASEAN Member States Country Brief: Philippines. https://www.unicef.org/eap/media/13401/file/UNICEF%20Migration%20Country%20brief%20Philippines.pdf.
Voigt, G. (2023). “Japan tentatively opens its doors to international care workers”. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. https://www.bpb.de/themen/migration-integration/laenderprofile/english-version-country-profile
Terminology (in order of appearance)
Terminology (in order of appearance)
climate change: a change in the temperature and precipitation patterns in an area, in recent times due to human economic activities
income: money received from work or investments
minimum wage: the lowest wage permitted by law or other agreement
care: the act of providing what is necessary for the health, welfare, upkeep, and protection of someone or something
global care chain: a situation where caregivers from poorer countries migrate to wealthier ones, creating a global network of care relationships
care crisis: conditions in society where there is not enough care available, many lack of access to the care they need, and where people doing care experience increasingly difficult conditions
poverty: the state of being poor
gender inequality: people are not treated equally on the basis of their gender
gross domestic product (GDP): the total value of all goods and services produced in an economy in a time period
GDP per capita: the total value of all goods and services produced in an economy in a time period divided by the population
indicator: a variable that measures a characteristic of a group of people or an ecosystem
globalisation: the increased movement and influence of humans, products, money, technologies and culture across borders
direct care: care that addresses an immediate need, often involves physical contact between caregiver and care-receiver
indirect care: care that supports the living conditions that humans need to survive and thrive
extended family: a family which extends beyond parents and children to include grandparents and other relatives
remittance: money sent to someone else; in migration contexts, money sent by the migrant back to the home country
care drain: the loss of people working in paid and unpaid care due to migration or other reasons
exploitation: using and benefiting from resources; the term is often used negatively to imply using power to take advantage of a situation
kafala system: a system of employment where the state gives local individuals or businesses permits to sponsor foreign workers; the sponsor may provide some expenses and housing, and the worker's employment permission is tied to the specific employer
system: a set of interdependent parts that organise to create a functional whole
gender equality: when people of different genders are treated equally
income inequality: when there are differences in income levels between people
push factors: negative conditions in a migrant’s home country that lead them to migrate
pull factors: relatively more positive factors in a host country that attract migrant workers
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