Migrant domestic workers and transnational foodcare chains in pandemic times

Abstract

In view of heightened food security issues in COVID-19 times, we employ a transnational lens to give bifocal attention to migrant women’s experiences during the pandemic, as they sought to secure access to food for themselves and for left-behind children and family members in Indonesia and the Philippines. In conjunction with the classic idea of global care chains and the notion of foodwork, we propose the idea of transnational foodcare chains. This distinctly agentic, migrant, and maternal food labour came to the fore under exceptional times of pandemic-induced social distancing, economic precarity, and limited travel. First, we argue that these foodcare chains are multi-relational, involving interdependence and reciprocity among a web of caregivers to secure food gaps. Second, we suggest that foodcare chains also extend to friendship networks forged among fellow migrant domestic workers in Singapore. Third, under pandemic conditions, we argue that foodcare chains enter the domain of well-being and healthcare as food becomes evoked as medicine and cures. Drawing on findings from 40 qualitative interviews with Indonesian and Filipino migrant domestic workers in Singapore, we focus on developing, within studies of food (in)security, the idea of foodcare chains by foregrounding the maternal, relational, and often invisible labour of achieving food security for migrant women and their left-behind families.