Reflection on care work

By Marcelina Bautista

Since the end of the last century, there has been a process of aging in society that has led to a crisis of care, both paid and unpaid work, which points to a social and economic reorganization that manifests a profound inequality. Impoverished and racialized women have had to cover the increasingly strenuous needs of this unrecognized and undervalued work. Western and of course privileged countries cover the needs of care work with migrant women from the global south who in turn leave their children or dependents with other women in their families, because in those countries care work cannot be done because there are no longer people willing or interested in doing it. In this way, in these northern countries they put a band-aid on this problem with the migration of women from other countries, so the chains of migration are also chains of care that fall on the backs of domestic workers. This is how women end up solving a problem that belongs to society through a job that the States constantly refuse to recognize as such.