Global organization, home care: the internal structure of the migrant care sector

Abstract

Globalization consists of various interactions between structural and individual level factors. It is a process that determines social structures, and thus the framework of individual level decisions and action, while some of the actors are actively engaged in shaping them. There is a demand for migrant care work in health and elderly care services and is formed at the intersection of multiple spheres of actions (of the state, private sphere, families). The cheap and flexible human resource capacities, providing partly professional and partly familial-type care with long working hours (even around the clock) on a long run, can be recruited among women coming from abroad. The reproduction sector that has been integrated into the global labor market, and has become a notable section itself, raises several new questions, compelling us to examine the interference of three aspects: gender, migration and care. In my paper I aim at demonstrating how women from Eastern and Central Europe got involved in the global care sector, how they contribute to its functioning, and what work regimes have been established within the sectors covered by them.