Behind Europe's Care Curtain. Migrant Care Workers from Europe's East and Children Left behind

This paper interrogates the features of the Global Care Chain (GCC) from the angle of Eastern Europe. Since the early 1990s, Eastern Europe became the main sending region of migrant care workers to the West und South of Europe resulting in an intimate connection of the care deficit in the ‘old’ EU with care provision from the ‘new’ Europe’. Although the emerging picture shares certain characteristics with the GCC, there are many discrepancies in this geo-political setting, and I argue that Eastern Europe cannot easily be subsumed into the Global South. Instead, the legacy of state socialism and the destructive forces of the rampant capitalism that was introduced during the transition period play an important role in the understanding of this migration. In opposition to ‘the West’, co-breadwinning in ‘the East’ was a key element of the gender equality politics of state socialisms. The female care migration from this region is therefore a result of women’s specific understanding of their citizenship obligations as ‘earner’ and as ‘care giver’. However, while women, many mothers among them, migrate in large numbers and become bread winners, there are severe counter currents in their home countries hampering their mobility. My paper focuses on public debates in sending countries entailing moral outrage about migrant parents who leave their children behind. These children are referred to as ‘Euro-orphans’ and women are eventually accused of bad motherhood performance. I consider the analysis of the orphan debate a litmus test for Europe’s Care Curtain by showing that next to gender, class, and nationality a universalized form of ‘good motherhood behavior’ or likewise the deviance of it becomes an important component of the ‘othering’ of migrant mothers.