Caring for Those Who Care: Domestic Workers and the Global Care Economy

Who will care for us? And who is doing the caring for those who care? Domestic workers migrate internationally and within their home countries across “global care chains” that are racialized, gendered, and change with time (Hochschild 2002). Migrant domestic workers often face concerns around legal status, immigration barriers, employer dependency and fears of deportation. Many of these workers leave behind families and kin networks and find themselves without the structural support they may have once had.

Yet an important shift has happened over the last twenty years in terms of these legal protections, as many governments have shifted to establish equal rights protections under the law for domestic workers, especially across Latin America. Yet there is a gap in terms of domestic workers being left out of care provisions in the countries they work in and live.

This paper touches on the importance of worker voice for domestic workers, in that they must have a voice in policy discussions around the politics of care and the growing care economy. It draws from a 7-point framework on worker voice to suggest that the only ways forward to care for those who care is to center domestic workers’ voice at the heart of the discussion.