In September 2024, our monthly Journal Club discussed two pieces of research delving into debates regarding domestic and care work: ‘Global care chains’ by Gianne Sheena Sabio, Kritika Pandey and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (2022) and ‘Private Labor Market Intermediaries in the Europeanized Live-in Care Market between Germany and Poland: A Typology’ by Simone Leiber, Kamil Matuszczyk and Verena Rossow (2019).
The first document presented the concept of global care chains developed in the 2000s, the critiques it has received and the connected debates and notions, such as the ‘international division of reproductive labour’. In its turn, the second document presented the results of a research on the role of intermediaries in live-in care arrangements between two EU member states (Germany and Poland). The authors presented a typology to detail the role and functioning of these private actors, while detailing this phenomenon of circular intra-EU migration for long term care provision.
Our discussion focused on the role of intermediaries in ‘formalising’ care and domestic work and its limitations. We were particularly interested in the role of intermediaries as gatekeepers of the labour market of the country of arrival, and the implications that this might have on our broader reflection on the “border of the labour market”. This context led us to consider the impacts of different arrangements in the provision of care and domestic work (and in the workers’ rights) in Europe, in a multidirectional migratory movement (intra and inter-EU).