Defamilialization of Whom? Re-Thinking Defamilialization in the Light of Global Care Chains and the Transnational Circulation of Care

Abstract

Defamilialization represented an effective response to the corpus of gender-blind concepts in social policy as it placed women’s interest and their corresponding welfare needs at the forefront. But the concept faces new challenges. First, defamilialization as implemented in European countries relies on important flows of migrant care workers. Still it is not fully accessible to migrant care workers themselves. Second, defamilialization, usually in terms of access to paid work and to public support for care, does not sufficiently take into account the specific situation of migrant workers who continue to assume care responsibilities for geographically distant relatives whose care needs are shaped within highly familialistic regimes of the ‘South’. By crossing the literatures on transnational caregiving and on the emancipating potential of welfare states, this chapter brings forward defamilialization from the side of migrant carers and advocates for a more substantive approach in order to reflect their multi-situated and complex trajectories.