Migrant care and domestic workers beyond the COVID-19 crisis : a call to action for transnational cooperation

Abstract

Care and domestic work –whether paid or unpaid– encompasses diverse activities: cooking, cleaning, shopping, teaching, caring for children, the sick, and the elderly. Globally, it falls overwhelmingly on women and girls. While diverse factors are heightening care demand, a phenomenon has developed during the last decades: increasingly, people migrate to provide care, generating ‘global care chains’. This policy brief highlights how global care chains mesh migration, class, gender, labour, and care at a transnational level, requiring coherent multilateral approaches to tackle challenges and seize opportunities to guarantee migrant care workers rights.