Majella Kilkey

Introduction: Domestic and Care Work at the Intersection of Welfare, Gender and Migration Regimes: Some European Experiences

Research over the last decade and more, has documented a resurgence of paid domestic and care labour (that is, work performed for pay in private households, such as household cleaning and maintenance and care for elders/disabled/children) across the Global North. 1 Much of the research has revealed the increasing reliance on migrant , as opposed to home-state, domestic workers, and it has been suggested (Lutz, 2007: 4) that domestic and care work has contributed more than any other sector of the labour market to one of the key features of the ‘age of migration’ (Castles and Miller, 2009) – its feminisation. At the same time though, as Lintons (2002) research on immigrant-niche formation in the USA suggests, the availability of immigrants in itself, has probably contributed to the growth of the sector.

Men and Domestic Labor: A Missing Link in the Global Care Chain

This article develops Manalansan’s critique that the concept of global care chains, while feminizing scholarship on the relationship between migration and globalization, has been less successful at gendering it, in part because it largely ignores men. The article responds to this gap by focusing on male domestic workers. The focus is such, however, that a new dimension to the emerging research agenda on male domestic workers is suggested. Thus, it is argued that in addition to examining how men are implicated in the global redistribution of stereotypically female tasks of domestic labor, we need to broaden our conceptualization of social reproduction to interrogate the ways in which stereotypically male areas of domestic work, such as gardening and household repair and maintenance, are embedded in global care chains. The argument is based on a review of the existing literature, as well as findings emerging from the author and colleague’s on-going exploration in the United Kingdom, using quantitative and qualitative research methods, of the scale, characteristics, dynamics, and drivers of the commoditization of specifically male tasks of social reproduction and their displacement onto migrant men.

Migration and uneven development within an enlarged European Union: Fathering, gender divisions and male migrant domestic services:

Drawing mainly on qualitative evidence gathered from interviews with migrant handymen and with labour-using households in the UK, this paper analyses how this migration typifies economic and social divisions within Europe and embodies conflicting tensions between economic and social policies at an interpersonal level. By supplying household services, migrant handymen enable labour-using households to alleviate time pressures and conflicts in time priorities arising from tensions between economic expectations regarding working hours and work commitment, and social expectations regarding contemporary ideas of active parenting. Similarly to the outsourcing of feminized domestic labour and care, these tensions are in part resolved for labour-using households by extending class divisions across national boundaries while leaving gender divisions changed but not transformed and in some instances exacerbating work/ life tensions among the migrants. These broad findings are complicated by differential desires and capabilities around fathering practices among fathers in labour-using households and among the migrants, and economic differentiation among the migrant population. Although we cannot tell from our study whether such movement reinforces or redresses uneven development, what we can say is that existing cohesion policies are insufficient to redress uneven development, and individual responses including migration can reinforce existing social divisions. Further, existing social policies for promoting gender equality fail to recognize or redress the deeply embedded gendered norms.

The widening participation agenda: the marginal place of care

This paper is based upon two empirical studies, which identify care‐giving responsibilities as a key mediator of mature students’ – a target group within the widening participation strategy – experiences of higher education. Employing a feminist lens on care, we identify a disjuncture between how students experience the challenges of negotiating care and study, and the narrow and economistic way care is addressed within higher education policy. We point to the broader recognition of care emerging within New Labour’s policies on the reconciliation of paid work and family life and argue that in the context of increasing expectations that learning is for life, care needs to be recognised in a broader form at the interface of both education and employment. Drawing on the notion of a ‘political ethics of care’, we conclude by identifying elements that should be included in a higher‐education ‘care culture’.

Lone mothers between paid work and care : the policy regime in twenty countries

Mainstream comparative welfare state research - a review feminist perspectives on comparative welfare state research lone mothers as an analytical category in an examination of how welfare states structure womens relationship to paid work and care - rationale and methods poor mothers - Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom non-poor mothers - the Netherlands poor workers - Austria, Germany, Greece. Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and the United States non-poor workers - Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway and Sweden patterns of convergence and divergence in the configuration of social rights attached to paid work, care and transitions accross 20 countries.

Gendered Divisions in Domestic Work Time The rise of the (migrant) handyman phenomenon

Drawing on quantitative analysis of three data sets — the Worker Registration Scheme, the Labour Force Survey, and the UK2000 Time Use Survey — and through an analysis of gendered use of time, this article provides an investigation of the small but growing phenomenon of male (migrant) domestic workers, and more specifically, of what we term the ‘(migrant) handyman phenomenon’, in the UK. The article provides some preliminary documentation and discussion of the scale, characteristics, and drivers of the supply of and demand for these workers. By handymen we are referring to men doing traditionally ‘masculine’ domestic jobs such as home maintenance and gardening. We explore the gender-differentiated character of household work, including care, the implications for the gendered forms and quality of time experienced by women and men, and the ensuing feasibility of and demand for outsourcing these stereotypically masculine activities. In so doing we acknowledge the potential of current expectations of men to be both breadwinners and hands-on fathers to generate new time pressures for households . We also document the supply of migrant handymen coming from the accession countries of the European Union. By focusing on stereotypically masculinized forms of domestic work the article seeks to make a modest contribution to the literature on globalization, migration and social reproduction, which to date has largely focused on the more prevalent phenomenon of migrants engaged in traditionally female domestic work such as cleaning and caring.

Domestic-Sector Work in the UK: Locating Men in the Configuration of Gendered Care and Migration Regimes

Research on the processes underpinning the contemporary growth in the commoditisation of domestic labour focuses on feminised areas of work, such as cleaning and care. Yet research examining trends in domestic outsourcing highlights how mens, as well as womens, household work is subject to increased commoditisation. Through a qualitative enquiry of households which outsource stereotypically male domestic chores – essentially, household and garden repair and maintenance – and men who do such work for pay, we seek to understand the processes underpinning its outsourcing. In doing so, we adopt a framework which treats the paid domestic-work sector as a critical nexus at which gendered care and migration regimes intersect. The focus on male domestic chores, however, requires that we broaden that framework in ways which can more fully illuminate mens positions within it.

Contextualizing rationality: Mature student carers and higher education in England

Abstract In England, the Government has implemented policies to increase and diversify participation in higher education (HE). Changes in funding arrangements that shift the burden of paying for education from the state to individuals have also been introduced. To reconcile the contradiction between widening participation and the individualization of the costs of study, HE is being framed as a risk-free and individualized financial investment. Informed by critiques from feminist economics and the philosophy of “rational economic man,” this paper argues that the governments HE policies are permeated by a narrow concept of reason and presuppose highly individualized, instrumental, and economic actors. Drawing on the findings from two studies conducted at the University of Hull, this paper demonstrates how this understanding of human behavior is incongruent with the experiences of one group of students – mature student carers – whose life choices are informed by their caring responsibilities.

Conditioning family-life at the intersection of migration and welfare: the implications for ‘Brexit families'

European Free Movement (EFM) was central to the referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. Under a ‘hard’ Brexit scenario, it is expected that EFM between the UK and the EU will cease, raising uncertainties about the rights of existing EU citizens in the UK and those of any future EU migrants. This article is concerned with the prospects for family rights linked to EFM, which, we argue impinge a range of families – so-called ‘Brexit families’ (Kofman, 2017) - beyond those who are EU-national families living in the UK. The article draws on policy analysis of developments in the conditionality attached to the family rights of non-EU migrants, EU migrants and UK citizens at the intersection of migration and welfare systems since 2010, to identify the potential trajectory of rights post-Brexit. While the findings highlight stratification in family rights between and within those three groups, the pattern is one in which class and gender divisions are prominent and have become more so over time as a result of the particular types of conditionality introduced. We conclude by arguing that with the cessation of EFM, those axes will also be central in the re-ordering of the rights of ‘Brexit families’.

Marriage Migration Policy as a Social Reproduction System: The South Korean Experience

The chapter examines marriage migration policies in South Korea through the conceptual lens of social reproduction. Marriage migration is one of the defining features of the Korean migration regime. Marriage migrants have rapidly increased since the late 1990s, and the marriage migration flow into Korea has been highly feminized. The Korean government has been actively intervening in the process of admission, adjustment and settlement of marriage migrants. Marriage migrants are regarded as ‘desirable migrants’ in Korea since they perform indispensable reproductive roles as wives, mothers and daughters-in-law. In return, they are granted enhanced rights of residency, citizenship and social protection. The Korean experience of (female) marriage migration can contribute to expanding knowledge on migrants’ reproductive roles in households as unpaid care workers.