Who cares? The unintended consequences of policy for migrant families

Abstract

This chapter focuses on care and caregiving to examine the unintended consequences of policy for both settlement and transnational family relations. Migration-and even refugee policy-is rarely designed around care practices and needs. Yet, care and caregiving are often key drivers of mobility-increasingly visible in the ‘care-chains’ of the ‘global south’, but largely invisible in the temporary forms of mobility characteristic of the ‘global north’. When care is a central motivation for mobility women are the major actors involved, and hence the dramatic feminisation of migration, including domestic workers, middling migrants and flying grandmothers. A focus on the portability of care offers a fresh perspective on the more prominent political, economic and legal migration agendas, extending our assessment of migrant precarity.