The Backstage of the Care Economy
Transnational Perspectives on the Commercialisation of Care
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pluto Press
Publishing:20th May '25
£24.99
This title is due to be published on 20th May, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
What is it like to care for another family, while yours remains in a different country? In today's capitalist society, migrant women performing care work in private households experience the painful tension of caring for both, often under precarious conditions.
Characterised as the 'backstage' family, the carer's remote relationship with their loved ones at home is often purely digital, with the double dilemmas of migrant motherhood and stay-behind fathers - exposing the pitfalls of transnational employment relations and the growth of social inequality.
Here, Helma Lutz explores the debates around this issue, focusing on carers from Eastern Europe working in the West. She unpacks questions around feminist critiques of capitalism and the commodification of emotional labour, exploring how gender justice and the search for socialist feminist utopias can shape how we see a future - not only for the improvement of the carers’ working and living conditions but also for a new way of dealing with care work.
'The Backstage of the Care Economy reveals the causes and consequences behind the explosion of migrant care work. It is a remarkable accomplishment and contribution from one of the leading social scientists of gender, care and migration in Europe'
-- Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Princeton University'A tour de force distillation of radical social thought on domestic labour grounded in critiques of global capitalism. This prodigiously researched book strikes a perfect balance between theory and empirics, examining the entanglement of migrant women’s lives in former Socialist Republics as they shuttle between wage employment abroad and their homes'
-- Heidi Gottfried, co-editor of Global Labor Migration: New Directions'A powerful, systemic analysis of the outsourcing of care in Western Europe and the transnational social inequalities underpinning these processes. With remarkable precision and insight, Lutz brings the contemporary 'private' relations of care to the front stage of theory and debate on capitalism and society – emboldening us all to engage vigorously with the centrality of care'
-- Isabel Shutes, Associate Professor, Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science'Lutz tackles one of the most important issues facing us today: transnational care migration. Based on over 14-years of research and focusing on East-to-West European migrations of care workers, this book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in gender, migration and care work'
-- Ito Peng, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of TorISBN: 9780745345369
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
240 pages