Nicola Yeates

Global Care Chains

This article critically examines the utility of the ‘global care chain’ concept and considers various modifications required to that concept in order to render it a major generative force in feminist and non-feminist research. By way of progressing this research agenda, the discussion critically evaluates the possibilities and limitations of a more rigorous application of global commodity chain analysis, from which the global care chain concept is presently only loosely derived, to transnational care services. The incompatibility of (non-feminist) commodity chain analysis and (feminist) care chain analysis, together with the weaknesses in each of these bodies of analysis, requires the integration of a range of modifications into a revised global care chain framework. These modifications involve foregrounding transnational labour networks and applying an engendered global commodity chain perspective to the analysis of these networks as well as broadening the application of the global care chain concept to embrace a variety of groups and settings. Further research required to progress the development of this field of study is outlined.

A dialogue with ‘global care chain’ analysis: nurse migration in the Irish context

This article examines the relationship between globalization, care and migration, with specific reference to the ‘global care chain’ concept. The utility of this concept is explored in the light of its current and potential contributions to research on the international division of reproductive labour and transnational care economies. The article asserts the validity of global care chain analysis but argues that its present application to migrant domestic care workers must be broadened in order that its potential may be fully realized. Accordingly, five ways in which the concept could be more broadly applied are outlined and applications of this expanded framework are illustrated through a case study of nurse migration in the Irish context. Finally, the discussion considers future directions for empirical and theoretical research into global care chains and suggests various lines of enquiry.

A Global Political Economy of Care

Care is an important analytical concept in social policy because of what its social organisation reveals about social formations and the nature of welfare states. To date, social policy analyses of care have focused on the social (re)organisation of care within nation states, which are largely treated as ‘sealed’ entities. Consequently these analyses neglect to examine the impact of transnational processes on the socio-organisational shifts observed. This article outlines the contours of a global political economy (GPE) of care with a view to elucidating the transnational dimensions to care restructuring. It focuses in particular on domestic care labour because of the extensive internationalisation of domestic services and its significance for the social relations of production and the division of labour. The discussion reflects on analytical issues for the academic study of social policy and care raised by a GPE approach.

Social Politics and Policy in an Era of Globalization: Critical Reflections

This paper critically examines the ways in which social policy is said to be affected by globalization. The prevailing approach has been framed in terms of the impact of ‘‘external’’ economic forces on national welfare states. Globalization is said to undermine the economic and political conditions on which welfare states were built, erode national policy autonomy and force the marketization and residualization of welfare states. These predictions are found wanting on the grounds that they share many of the assumptions, and therefore also the faults, of ‘‘strong’’ globalization theory. A more nuanced account of the way in which social politics and social policy are affected by globalization is needed and a global governance perspective is outlined. This, it is argued, better captures the political and institutional environment in which social policy is formulated and implemented. It also recognizes the importance of ‘‘local’’ factors and their interaction with global ones in shaping political responses, including social policy, to globalization. The discussion highlights the enduring power of ‘‘local’’ forces—those which are at the level of and internal to states—and of politics and ideology in shaping the process of globalization and ultimately its implications for welfare states and social policies.

Common origins, different paths: adaptation and change in social security in Britain and Ireland

This article compares social security in the British and Irish welfare states. Laying emphasis on both historical origins and contemporary reforms, it develops and applies a comparative framework that brings together structural, political and ideological factors. The article outlines how two social security systems compare as regards principles, institutional features and political characteristics. It then goes on to identify the main reforms and their significance for the characteristics of each of the two models and the cross-national comparison. The analysis reveals that different factors are driving developments in both countries and that, despite common origins and some contemporary similarities, the two social security systems are moving in different directions.

Introduction: Transnational Social Policy

Social policy and the social sciences more generally, have tended to emphasise links, activities and processes occurring ‘within’ nation states to the neglect of those cutting across them. This ‘methodological nationalism’ is increasingly being questioned as transnational processes, be they ‘from above’ or ‘from below’, institutionalised or non-institutionalised, formal or informal, have become more significant over the last half century. The spread of activities, links and ties beyond national borders has become more extensive and the interactions themselves have become more intensive. In the light of these changes, the aim of this themed section is to draw attention to the transnational dimensions of social policy and advance the study of transnationalism in relation to social policy and welfare.

Gender, familism and housing ☆: Matrimonial property rights in ireland

Abstract This article explores the gender structure of housing rights, and specifically matrimonial property law, in the Republic of Ireland as a basis for examining the means by which women gain access to and control over economic resources, or capital. Taking the Family Home Protection Act (1976) and the ill-fated Matrimonial Home Bill (1993) as examples of legislation to strengthen womens matrimonial property rights, it is argued that these have been formulated using gendered, familist, categories of reform. The States attempts to strengthen womens entitlements have been mediated by its constitutional commitment to maintain a preference for the marital family as well as its failure to recognise the economic value of womens unpaid domestic work. This article argues that in this context, the Irish States strategy of gender equality, which is based on the equitable treatment of different household types, is divisive, ineffective. and inequitable.

The Irish Catholic Female Religious and the Transnationalisation of Care: An Historical Perspective

The transnational turn in sociological studies of care and welfare is generating new research agendas focused on the circulation and hybridisation of social ideas, values, practices, resources, relations and provision across political borders. This article examines neglected aspects within care transnationalisation research by focusing on the involvement of the Irish Catholic female religious from a historical perspective. Successive histories of female religious care migrations reveal Catholic religious orders of women to be the epitome of a flexible, hyper-mobile labour force. The nature of religious life combined with the social, cultural, economic and organisational capacities of the Catholic Church rendered female religious orders pivotal to the formation of border-spanning care labour networks through which Catholic ideas and practices of carework circulated to forge and sustain links and connections between Ireland and many other places worldwide. The discussion emphasises the necessity of attending to ‘counter-geographies’ of global care migrations, the interlocking nature of religious and secular care migration and historical antecedents of contemporary care transnationalisation processes in future research programmes.

Business, as usual: the policy priorities of the World Bank’s discourses on youth unemployment and the global financial crisis

This article undertakes a detailed analysis of the formative role of the World Bank in the framing of youth unemployment. It charts the World Banks emergence as a powerful political actor in this policy field and identifies the ideational content of its policy discourses on the causes of youth unemployment and responses to it. Four principal themes are identified: skills deficits; wage regulation; the “demographication” of explanations for burgeoning youth unemployment; and connections between youth unemployment, criminal activity and social disorder. The discussion highlights significant evidence of neo-liberal continuity and reinvention in World Bank discourses as its normative and ideational frameworks are extended to new terrains of analysis in ways that infer links between youth unemployment and individual deficits of the unemployed.

Global Social Policy Forum Editorial Introduction: Conditional Cash Transfers

The subject of this Forum is conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes. The spread of these programmes is extensive, with 30 countries now having instituted such programmes and further ones set to adopt them. Programme coverage is also widening, in some countries now embracing a significant proportion of the population. International governmental organizations, notably the World Bank, have been active in facilitating the international spread of these programmes. As widely criticized as they are admired, CCT programmes have become a key subject of debate within contemporary global social policy. Collectively, the contributions to this Forum address key questions arising from these programmes:What arguments are advanced in favour of CCTprogrammes?What objections and criticisms are raised against them?What kinds of policy processes have facilitated their spread? And, what is the role, if any, of CCT programmes in strategies to attain global social policy ambitions and objectives, such as the Millennium Development Goals? In addressing these questions, each of the contributors approaches the subject from different country experiences and positions, theoretical and political perspectives and ethical concerns. Armando Barrientos reviews commonly advanced arguments for CCT programmes, and counter-arguments made against them. He concludes that while their apparent embrace of a multidimensional understanding of poverty in the design of social security payments is to be welcomed, the effectiveness of such transfers in addressing child poverty is likely at best to be marginal. Enrique Valencia Lomelí addresses the illusory premises on which CCT programmes are based. These illusions, he argues, are as multidimensional as the poverty that the GSP FORUM 163