Globalization and the Increase in Transnational Care Work: The Flip Side

Jean L. Pyle’s article places transnational care work at the center of globalization debates. It reminds readers that globalization is not only the movement of goods, capital, finance, and technology. It also includes the cross-border reorganization of care, intimate labor, domestic labor, and embodied work. Arrangements that appear to happen inside private households are tied to migration policy, welfare-state restructuring, segmented labor markets, and global income inequality.

The article’s value lies in treating “care shortages” as one face of the global economy, not simply as a temporary failure of some families or nations to find caregivers. When care work becomes transnational, both sending and receiving countries produce new gendered contradictions: receiving countries gain low-cost care, while sending communities may face gaps in intimate life and social reproduction.

For FemRes, the article strengthens the intersection of migration and feminist economics. It helps readers understand why feminist economics must include domestic labor, nursing, and emotional labor in globalization analysis rather than focusing only on formal wage labor and market indicators.