The Social Reproductive Labour and Globalization

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to describe the main changes globalization and the engendering of work and migration have produced in the politics of reproductive labour, and to address several important questions they raise from a political and ethical point of view. I intend to argue here that it is the privatization of care and the exploitation of reproductive labour, not its remuneration, that constitutes a problem today. From the perspective of both local and global justice, the privatization of care poses a threat, due the consequences it entails in terms of different purchasing power not only between rich and poor countries, but even within rich countries themselves, between higher and lower classes. Moreover, from a gender perspective, the commodification of reproductive labour today assumes forms that are functional to the reinforcement of patriarchal power structures and create an apparent conflict of interest between women, along lines of class, colour and race. At the same time, the new division of reproductive labour threatens to undermine everything that has been achieved since the 1970s, in terms of gender parity, equal division of care labour between men and women and the politics of reconciliation between labour and caring.