Women's Studies International Forum xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

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Reading global care chains as migrant trajectories:A theoretical framework for the understanding ofstructural change

Tiina VaittinenResearch Group on Corporeality, Movement and Politics, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Linna Building, Room 6068, FIN33014, University of Tampere, Finland

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Please cite this article as: Vaittinen, T., Runderstanding of structural change,Wome

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In the study of the global restructuring of care work, the ‘global care chain’ (GCC) has emergedas a predominant analytical framework. The GCC literature addresses gendered social changefrom myriad angles of mobility, but it also takes the structures of global political economy(GPE) somewhat for granted. The literature focuses on the unequal global structures and theirrole in the production of mobile care workers. However, it does not address the ways in whichthis global movement of care also constantly transforms the structures at the micro-level. Afterreviewing the GCC literature, the article argues that, in order to understand these incessanttransformations, the global care chains should be read as migrant trajectories. The articleprovides a general definition for the term migrant trajectory, as well as an empirical exampleof how it can be used in the study of the global movement of care.

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

For any emergent material configuration, infinitesimallysmall causes can transform successive conditions forinteraction among elements such that they end up havingmassive but unanticipated effects.

[Coole & Frost, 2010: 14]

The global restructuring of reproductive labour hasintensified over the past decades. The migration of careworkers from poorer to richer societies on a massive scalebrings about social change in host countries as well as in thecountries of origin. A central dynamic behind this movementis the gendered realm of care and its embodied need.Feminist analysis has provided the most compelling ac-counts of the phenomenon. Here, the ‘global care chain’(GCC), originally devised by Arlie Hochschild (2000: 131) as‘a series of personal linkages between people across theglobe based on the paid or unpaid work of caring’, hasemerged as a predominant frame of analysis.

In this article, I aim at understanding the changing structuresof global political economy (GPE)1 by reading the global care

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chains as migrant trajectories. Through a literature review, Ishow how the GCC approach addresses gendered social changefrom myriad angles of mobility, but nevertheless takes thestructures of GPE somewhat for granted. The GCC perspectivefocuses on the unequal global structures as producing mobilecareworkers.2 Yet, it fails to systematically analyse theways thatthis mobility also shapes the structures at the micro-level.

I do not deny that the structures of GPE are indeedunequal and that this is a major reason for the migration ofcare workers from poorer to richer societies. Nevertheless, Iwish to redirect the attention slightly away from what theglobal structures are and towards their constant processes ofbecoming. In particular, I wish to illuminate the ways inwhich the movement of care influences the making of thestructures. Thereby, I underline the transformative power ofcare in the global political economy.

I claim that the gendered realm of care, its global need andthe consequent embodied movement produce structuralchange not only in the host societies or the countries oforigin but also in the space of their interrelations. I emphasisethe words embodied movement so as to underline that theagentive force I am interested in is not the migrant care

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worker per se, but her or his embodied trajectory through theglobal structures (see also Vaittinen, in press). In this regard,the paper relies on a new materialist ontology that 'testifiesto a critical and nondogmatic reengagement with politicaleconomy, where the nature of, and relationship between, thematerial details of everyday life and broader geopolitical andsocioeconomic structures is being explored afresh' (Coole &Frost, 2010: 7).

The new materialist ontology ‘is not about being, butbecoming’ (Coole, 2013: 453). Hence, the global politicaleconomy is to be understood as an ‘emergent materialconfiguration’ (Coole & Frost, 2010: 14, my emphasis) ratherthan an insurmountable structure. Indeed, I understand GPEitself as being in constant movement, going through processesof transformation that are caused by infinitesimal changeswithin its very structures.

I do refer to existing structures when talking about theinstitutionalised practices and discourses that dominate theoperation of GPE. At the same time, however, I want tomaintain that these structures never ‘exist’ in completestability, but they are constantly being rearticulated. Thereis an incessant turbulence imbued in the very micro (orperhaps quantum) level of GPE. When the turbulencetransforms the structures on the micro level, also the wholeis being transformed, including the level of the ‘macro’.Consequently, the global care economy and GPE as a wholeare irreversibly entangled with each other. Just like the‘micro’ is not really separable from the ‘macro’, the globalcare economy is not a realm separate from the widerstructures of GPE. It is part and parcel thereof, even a rathercentral one, given the necessity of care for human life andhence for any form of political economy. Namely, in spite ofits multifarious post-human tendencies (cf. Coole & Frost,2010) the operation of the global political economy isultimately dependent on embodied human beings. Nohuman embodiment can exist without care, which makesthe political economy ultimately dependent on care. Thus,when the global care economy changes, it is obvious that sodo the wider structures of GPE that depend on care.

My argumentation requires thatwe give up the idea that theglobal political economy can be empirically sliced up intodifferent levels of analysis. FionaWilliams (2011), for example,has suggested that the transnational care economy3 be beststudied by separating themicro practices of everyday care fromthe meso-level of national and supranational institutions andyet again from the macro-processes of globalisation. Whileperhaps analytically useful, in ontological terms this is anartificial distinction. Namely, the embodied movement of themigrant careworker cuts through eachof these levels, as she/hemoves through the global structures. There simply is no clearseparation between ‘global’, ‘national’ and ‘local’, since themigrant trajectory unites them all in the same global process.

The article proceeds as follows. I begin by reviewingthe global care chain literature, with a focus on how itaddresses the thematic of this special issue, that is,gendered social change vis-à-vis migration and mobility.On the basis of this (necessarily limited) review, I argue thatalthough the literature does indeed address gendered socialchange from myriad angles, it does not systematicallytheorise the transformative power of care in the structuresof GPE.

Please cite this article as: Vaittinen, T., Reading global care chaiunderstanding of structural change,Women's Studies International F

Thus, after the literature review, I develop a theoreticalframework for the understanding of the structural changethat is brought about by the global movement of care. Here, Ibuild on Nicola Yeates' (2009) extended model of GCCs. Hermodel effectively illustrates the structures in which carelabour is being globally reorganised. Yet, this model too failsto address the migrants' embodied movement as transforma-tive of the structures. Suggesting a deviant reading of Yeates, Ithus argue that the global care chains should be read asmigrant trajectories. I devise a general definition for the termmigrant trajectory, as well as elaborate its usage through anempirical example.

The empirical example consists of Daniel's4 migranttrajectory. He is one of the twenty-six Filipino nurses, male(n = 12) and female (n = 14), who have participated in myon-going PhD project, where I study the global care economyof ageing Finland by means of multi-sited ethnography(Marcus, 1995). Mainly, my research focuses on a group ofFilipino registered nurses who have migrated to Finland witha student visa, so as to study practical (auxiliary) nursing in aFinnish vocational school.5 The ethnographic research mate-rial has been collected during the years 2011 and 2012.During several shorter periods that lasted from one to threedays at a time, I followed the nurses' daily lives at thevocational school. I participated in the lessons, stayed inthe same dormitory flats where they lived, joining theirspare-time activities, sometimes ‘helping’ with the schoolassignments in the evenings. At the time, Daniel had alreadygraduated from this school and was in working life. I joinedhis working days at a private elder care home, if only for acouple of shifts.6

Due to the limited scope of this article and its primarilytheoretical ambitions, I will not present an in-depth empir-ical analysis of the material here. Rather, Daniel's trajectoryserves the purposes of illustration. The trajectory is con-structed through an analysis of his life-story interview, whichis read through my ethnographic field notes, as well as aninterview with another Filipino, Anna, whose trajectory ishighly relevant for Daniel's story. Daniel's trajectory under-lines the profound change of perception that follows, whenthe GCC is read as a migrant trajectory. It shows that theglobal care chain does not exist prior to the care worker'smovement in the global space. Rather, the ‘chain’ designatesan embodied trace that migrant leaves in the global struc-tures, as she/he moves through them. As such, the global carechain is the migrant trajectory: always a unique space ofnegotiations, where the global is recurrently made anew.

Global care chains and gendered social change: aliterature review

In Arlie Hochschild's (2000: 131) original definition, theGCCs are imagined as global ‘linkages’ that tie togetherindividuals and their households on the basis of paid orunpaid care work (Fig. 1). Thus, the care workers inHochschild's model are connected to one another throughthe care deficit that each has moved to fill or left behind.Archetypically, a chain is formed when a woman in the ‘FirstWorld’ fills her need of child care at home by hiring a migrantnanny from across the globe, who then has to leave her own

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children in someone else's care. According to Hochschild(2000: 136),

the chains often connect three sets of care-takers — onecares for the migrant's children back home, a second caresfor the children of the woman who cares for the migrant'schildren, and a third, the migrating mother herself, caresfor the children of professionals in the First World.

Thus, the Hochschildian care chain reaches from one end ofthe globe to the other, through individual households and their(available) strategies of filling the needs of care. These chains oflabour and emotions bend by the unequal structures of GPE sothat the individual ‘nodes’ of the chain do not have an equalstanding. At theWestern end of the Hochschildian chain, thereis ‘surplus love’where a child is eligible to the lovingpresence ofthe nanny as well as the parents. Simultaneously, children atthe other end are deprived of the concrete presence of theirmothers, the global nannies (Hochschild, 2000; Parreñas, 2001,2003, 2005. For criticism, McKay, 2007; Dumitru, this issue).

While influential, Hochschild's conceptualisation of GCCshas received its share of criticism. This has often resulted inempirical and theoretical expansions of the framework. Muchof the critique deals with the relative simplicity of theHochschildian model. Dumitru (this issue), for instance,points to the sexist tendencies imbued in the Hochschildiananalysis of global care work, calling for the recognition of careworkers as skilled labour. Spanger, Peterson, and Dahl (2013)argue that the internally complex nature of the state is notadequately accounted for, and McKay (2007) criticises theGCC's universalising perception of emotions. Importantly,McKay also points out that the GCC approach overshadowsthe agency positions of the migrant nanny, by representingher as ‘a migrant-victim best understood in terms of […]her role as the object of global capitalist expansion andrestructuring’ (McKay, 2007: 177). My own attempt to readthe GCCs as migrant trajectories is motivated by a criticismsimilar to this.

Others have also noted that with its almost exclusive focuson female migrants and motherly care, the GCC foregroundsheteronormative experiences of migration, gender, family andcare (Manalansan, 2006). Thereby, it reinforces care as theworkof particular types of women, namely married, heterosexualmothers. This critique has opened up space for interesting andimportant studies on male domestic workers, for instance(Bartolomei, 2010; Kilkey, 2010; Näre, 2010; Sarti, 2010; Sarti &Scrinzi, 2010; Scrinzi, 2010; Qayum & Ray, 2010; see alsoParreñas, 2012: 272–273).

The early GCC studies did not adequately account for thecontextual specificities of their case studies (Yeates, 2009),thereby reinforcing the idea that care, its practices andmeaningswould be somehow universally transportable (Huang, Thang, &Toyota, 2012; Raghuram, 2012). These critiques are linked withthe diversification of GCC studies, which now focus on South–South migration, for example (Huang et al., 2012; Kofman &Raghuram, 2012; see also Onuki, 2011); on the Europeanrather than the North-American context (Lutz, 2008, 2011); onthe Nordic welfare state (Isaksen, 2010a); on middle-incomecountries (Kofman & Raghuram, 2012); on professional nursingrather than domestic care (Gabriel, 2011; Isaksen, 2010b, 2012;Walton-Roberts, 2012; Yeates, 2009); and on other types of

Please cite this article as: Vaittinen, T., Reading global care chainunderstanding of structural change,Women's Studies International F

transnational care relations than mothering (Isaksen, 2010b,2012;Huang, Yeoh, & Toyota, 2012; Thai, 2012; cf. also Lu, 2012).Recently, there have been calls to deconstruct the methodolog-ical nationalism (cf. Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002) imbued inthe GCC framework. Attention has been drawn, for instance, tothe GCC's local configurations (Raghuram, 2012; Kofman &Raghuram, 2012: 417–418) and ‘networks that do not necessar-ily transcend international state borders’ (Yeates, 2012: 148).

How then, has the GCC literature addressed change?Already before Hochschild (e.g., Enloe, 1989), it has beenrecognised that the global redistribution of domestic workhelps to maintain the patriarchal social order of the hostsocieties. Thanks to migrant nannies, it is argued, societieshave not been pressured to provide public child care whenthe mothers have joined the official labour market, nor havethe fathers been pressured to take on more responsibility ofdomestic work (Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2003; Lutz, 2008).Thus, to the extent that it helps to maintain the status quo oftraditional family roles in spite of the disintegrating patriar-chy, the Hochschildian GCC always has to do with genderedsocial change (cf. Yeates, 2012).

However, as Kofman and Raghuram (2012) note, in itsanalysis of the societal dynamics of gendered migration, theGCC research still too narrowly focuses on the South-Northrelations, and there on a specific selection of countries. Theyargue for an increased interest in Southern andmiddle-incomestates as care-importers. Often, the societal structures of care inthese countries differ considerably from those in the globalNorth, and the GCCs that emerge in these contexts are thus alsoradically different.

There is literature that dealswith the redistribution of care inthe sending countries of the global South. Haidinger (2008) aswell as Parreñas (2005) suggest that it is usually other womenwho take over the caring responsibilities of femalemigrants andthat alsomen'smigration often reinforces the traditional genderroles of parenting (Parreñas, 2005). Manalansan (2006: 241),however, points to Pingol's (2001) work as an example of howthemother'smigration can also lead to the husband ‘taking overthe work of “mothering”’. He furthermore argues that theblindness of GCC analyses to these kinds of social changes in thesending countries signifies their sexist and ‘imperialist’ tenden-cy to portray ‘thirdworldmen as lacking the cultural knowledgeto be authentic modern fathers’ (Manalansan, 2006: 240).

Manalansan's criticism however hides the fact that alsothe role of the First World men in GCCs remains a largelyunexplored question. Omissions like this may further reinforcethe understanding of care aswomen's andmigrants' work. All inall, it need be recognised that in constructing our visions of theglobal care relations, us researchers too constantly participate inthe (re)making of global political economy, by both reproducingand challenging its existing discursive structures.

Nevertheless, it is clear that when women and menemigrate for work on massive scale (for care or any othertypes of jobs) leaving their families behind, this changes thegendered societal structures of source countries in complexways. This is particularly so when it is recognised that thechange is tied up with migration of fathers as well as mothersand sons as well as daughters, who can be single as well asmarried, and represent a complexity of sexual identities (cf.Manalansan, 2006). Indeed, it is now widely recognised thatthe restructuring of care is about intersectional, classed and

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racialised processes, where the global outsourcing of care worknot only reproduces gendered social orders but also does this atthe interplay of other formsof inequality. In some instances, ‘paiddomestic work allows middle-class women to obtain greaterequality while keeping working-class and migrant women intraditionally feminized nonstandard jobs’ (Sarti & Scrinzi, 2010:5). Similarly, however, the migrant's gendered social position,sexuality and class may be multiply (re)negotiated during themigration experience and often quite strategically so (Näre,2010; Isaksen, 2010b: 147; also Erel, 2009).

In the processes of migration, also the societal under-standings of care change, as migrants figure out new ways ofcaring from the distance. Today, new communication tech-nologies allow for concrete forms of transnational family-making (Madianou, 2012; Madianou & Miller, 2011). Remit-tances play a major role not only in financially empoweringthe migrant workers vis-à-vis their ‘home’ communities(Sarti & Scrinzi, 2010: 6), but also by symbolising a concreteform of care from afar (McKay, 2007; Thai, 2012). Withinfamilies, such changed relations of care shape the traditionalgender requirements, transforming as well as reinforcingthem. The ‘traditional pattern of the “good mother” whosacrifices herself for the well-being of her children’ maybecome paradoxically reproduced (Sarti & Scrinzi, 2010: 6),but the same applies also to other family members.

While transnational fathering remains an area less exploredin the literature (see however Parreñas, 2008; Pingol, 2001), sodoes the transnational care provided by sons. Thai (2012),however, draws attention to the changing notions of gooddaughterhood in the context of a Vietnamese diaspora, Baldassar(2011) with a reference to an Italian diaspora, and Isaksen(2010b: 154) in the context of Latvian nurses in Norway. Alsothe practices of grand-parenting are shaped in transnationalfamilies, as shown by Tatiana Tiaynen (2013: 113–151) as wellas Loretta Baldassar (2012).

Of course, it has not gone unnoticed in the literature that theglobal movement of care brings about change not only in thehost countries and countries of origin, but also in spaces that cutthrough the two. Isaksen (2010b: 138; 2012), for example,explores ‘the transnational spaces of care’ as challenging ‘thetraditional understandings of the family and the welfare state asnation-state-specific social institutions’. Lopez (2012), in turn,develops a concept of ‘curo-scapes’ to describe the ‘transnationalsphere of administering andmanaging care that nowoperates asmuch at a local state level as it does at a trans-regional and globallevel’ (Lopez, 2012: 253). This work helps to perceive thetransnational structures of care as dynamic and transformingrather than stagnant and unchanging.

Care is ‘made over’ as it moves transnationally (Huang etal., 2012: 130). The connotations, practices and requirementsof care itself change from one society to another, and carecannot thus be seen as a mere commodity being ‘transported’(see also Raghuram, 2012). The state specific, politico-juridical care regimes (Williams & Gavanas, 2008) havethe power to shape the meanings of care as it crosses aninternational border, but they also have an impact on whodoes the work of care. In many Western countries, new lawsand policies are presently constructing care as migrants'work. Through legislative measures and taxation, for in-stance, informal and unregulated niches of care work arecreated in the labour markets. These precarious niches are

Please cite this article as: Vaittinen, T., Reading global care chaiunderstanding of structural change,Women's Studies International F

often filled by migrants whose position in society does notallow an entry to formal jobs (Calleman, 2012; Gavanas,2010, 2013).

Hence, it must be emphasised that while gender stillremains a central organising principle in terms of who doesthe work of care, in many national contexts migrancy appearsas almost as crucial (Näre, 2013). The gradual construction ofcare as a ‘migrant's job’, rather than a ‘woman's job’, shows howthe links between gender, migration and social change are notcarved in stone. They are deeply entwined with the respectivelegal–political structures at place — which themselves are inconstant movement. This change cannot be understood merelyby looking at the unequal structures of GPE, but more nuanced,bottom-up heuristic tools are required.

Yeates' extended vision of GCCs

Implicitly, the GCC literature addresses gendered socialchange from myriad angles of mobility. Here, however,change is largely analysed either in terms of the migrant'sintersectional identity, family relations, or on the level of‘host’ and ‘home’ societies. Simultaneously, the globalstructures in which the changes are negotiated are taken asrelatively given. In the remainder of the paper, I argue thatthe multiplicity of negotiations involved in the migrationprocess does, in fact, shape the structures of GPE too. In thissection, I will spend some time in describing the complexstructuration of the global care chains themselves. Here, Iturn to the work of Nicola Yeates (2009) and her nuancedcriticism and extension of the GCC model.

Like many others, also Yeates criticises the Hochschildiannotion of GCCs as too simplistic in scope. With its almostexclusive focus on childcare, Yeates argues, the concept failsto address the multifaceted processes in which differenttypes of care work are being globalised, hence neglecting thevarying institutional structures involved (also Cuban, 2013; Lopez,2012; Spanger et al., 2013). She calls for further attention in GCCanalyses to five areas in particular: (1) not only to global nannies,but also toother groupsofmigrant careworkers, including ‘skilled’migrants, such as nurses; (2)not only tomotherly relations, but alsoto the varying family situations in which care workers migrate;(3) not only to child-care, but also to the different other types ofcare, including health care, elder care, and so on; and (4) not onlyto domestic reproductive labour, but also to the varying institu-tional settings in which globalised care work is provided, such ashospitals and care homes. Finally, she emphasises that (5) carechains are always constructed in historicised contexts, the analysisofwhich is essential for the understanding of ‘their transformationover time and the confluence of factors bearing on thattransformation’ (Yeates, 2009: 48–55).

These five elements add to the complexity of GCCsconsiderably by steering attention towards other actorsthan the households directly involved in the practices ofcare. Furthermore, drawing on global commodity chains inmore detail than Hochschild,7 Yeates (2009: 59–66) suggeststhat the investigation of GCCs should account for: (A) ‘thestructure of inputs or outputs’, such as the education of the careworker, recruitment channels, and the organisation of thecare service system; (B) territoriality, particularly in the senseof ‘geographical spread of networks of labour encompassingindividual workers, households, labour brokers’ (Yeates,

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2009: 60, Fig. 3.3); and finally, (C) the internal governance interms of the nationally specific care and migration regimes(also Williams & Gavanas, 2008). These three elements areanalytically important in that they further emphasise theglobal care chains as historically particular constructions.

Thus, on the basis of Yeates' extended model, and as thebelow figures illustrate, the global care chains are indeed amatter of far more complex relations than the Hochschildiannotion would have it.

Involving a whole range of actors other than individualhouseholds, Yeates' GCCs are in fact less reminiscent of a chainthan a network of intertwining chains (Fig. 2). Arguably thus, herextended model is more capable than its predecessor ofrepresenting the complex global political economy of care.Yeates' model requires one to look not only at the linkagesbetween persons and institutions directly related to carework. Itdepicts the ways that care and its global need cut through awhole range of politico-economic institutions seemingly unre-lated to care. Indeed, this vision highlights how the global carechain involves actors from all levels of the political economy,from government authorities to educational institutions torecruitment agencies to financial institutions: all these actorsare involved in the nodeswhere the global trajectories of care arebeing (re)negotiated. In such ‘negotiations’, I argue, care and itsglobal movement come to shape the very structures of GPE.

Beyond the structural reading of GCCs

Capable of grasping complexity, Yeates' extended definitionof GCCs provides an extremely useful methodical tool: inspecific empirical analyses, her schematisationmakes it possibleto map out and scrutinise the multifarious politico-economicstructures that evolve around specific cases of globalised carework. Yet, it is here that I suggest a deviation from Yeates.

Yeates herself has utilised the model in the analysis ofinternational nurse migration, with a reference to what shecalls global nursing care chains (GNCCs). These consist of

a nursing institution in the host country […] the nursewho moves along the chain, sometimes an intermediatenursing situation in a third country […] and the nursing oreducational institution in the source country.

[Yeates, 2009: 75, my emphasis]

Such basic GNCC then follows and moves through acomplex network of relations that involve recruitment

Third world household 1

Third wohouseho

Fig. 1. Hochschild's GCCs (as envisione

Please cite this article as: Vaittinen, T., Reading global care chainunderstanding of structural change,Women's Studies International F

and training companies, state immigration services, nursinglicensing authorities, trade unions, advocacy and serviceNGOs and various other actors that exert influence on thecare chain— in particular historicised conditions embeddedon particular national and international legislative regimes,as visualised in Fig. 2 below (Yeates, 2009: 75–122).

What I find as problematic here is that Yeates defines themigrant care worker as moving along the chain; as if the chainpre-exists the migrant's movement. Indeed, Yeates' global carechain depicts a historical construction that enables themobilityof individual care workers, while depending on the productionof their mobility in one country and deficit in another. Mostcertainly this is an apt structural definition, allowing for adetailed yet complex analysis of the global care economy. Yet, Iargue, reading Yeates' model only this way risks giving toomuch emphasis on the ‘existing’ structures, while erasing outthe migrants and their embodied movement as agentive.

Imagining the global care chains as pre-structured pathsalong which the care workers migrate easily leads to theperception that the migrant care workers are but labouringbodies, governed by the rules of GPE; as opposed to livedbeings, whose embodied movement through the chainednetwork leaves its marks on the entire structure. Indeed, whenlooking at Yeates' illustration of an extended GCC (Fig. 2)more closely, with an eye on the migrant care worker, onecan see that she or he is not there! In the figure, the migratingcare worker is not mentioned at all.

Such an erasure of the migrant from the structuralpresentation of GCCs is highly political. This becomes evidentwhen it is noted that the original title of Yeates' figure is:‘Schematic presentation of the range of agents in global carechains’ (my emphasis). My point is not that the omissionreflects the political position of Yeates herself. In fact, Yeatesmakes it quite clear that her extended GCCmodel emphasises‘the structural characteristics of care labour’, while ‘advancingan agency analysis’ as a secondary goal (Yeates, 2009: 218,my emphasis). Yet, the omission tells its own story about thediscursive order being depicted. On the one hand, it perhapsshows how the figure of the migrant is easily sketchedinvisible in modern political economies, even when notintended. On the other hand, it also underlines the difficultyof depicting the GPE in ways that would not erase the lifethat influences the making of its structures. Namely, it isnot only the migrant care worker who is missing fromthe picture: there are no embodied agents visible, onlyinstitutional actors. Consequently, also the change that

rld ld 2

First world household

d by the author of this article).

s as migrant trajectories: A theoretical framework for theorum (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.01.009

Fig. 2. ‘Schematic presentation of the range of agents in global care chains’. Nicola Yeates, Globalizing care economies and migrant workers, p. 64, Fig. 3.4, published2009 (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan.

6 T. Vaittinen / Women's Studies International Forum xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

occurs in the interrelations of corporeal human beings isrendered invisible.

When the embodiedmovement of themigrant care workerdoes not fit in, the GCCs come to be perceived as abstracted,disembodied and stable. Thus, in order to understand themicro-level turbulence that constantly shapes the GCCs, wemust try and perceive things differently. In the remainder ofthe article, I argue that the migrants' movement constantlyre-creates the networked structures of GCCs that can then –

only after the movement – be schematised as something called‘global care chains’. Reading Yeates' figure thisway reveals that,while the migrant care worker is not mentioned as one of the‘agents’, the entire figure of the GCC is but a trace of themigrant's embodied movement, i.e., the migrant trajectory.

GCCs as migrant trajectories: a theoretical framework

Trajectory n […] 1 the path described by an object movingin air or space, esp. the curved path of a projectile.

[Concise English Dictionary, 1999: 1577]

Trajectory, Physics. The path of any body moving underthe action of given forces; […] esp. the curve described bya projectile in its flight through the air.

[Oxford English Dictionary, 2013]

Please cite this article as: Vaittinen, T., Reading global care chaiunderstanding of structural change,Women's Studies International F

The terms ‘migrant trajectory’ or ‘migrant's trajectory’ areused in several works of migration research, albeit usually in astudy-specific manner and without an explicit definition(Ditchev, 2008; Favell & Hansen, 2002; Gavanas, 2010: 19-22;Grillo, 2007; Haarhaus, 2006; Kynsilehto, 2011; Puumala,2012). Methodically, these analyses are often based on nar-ratives, such as migrants' life-stories, ethnographic data orliterary art; in many ways data similar to that of GCC analyses.Less analytically, the term may be used as a shorthand to acustomary understanding of migrants' route from one socialposition to another, as in ‘the traditional migrant trajectoryfrom migrant to citizen’ (Favell & Hansen, 2002: 583).However, when the term is harnessed for more analyticalpurposes, it usually describes the path of a migrant from one‘place’ to another, through a certain space of intersecting powerrelations. These analyses tend to take into account thesubjective decisions, relational contexts and structural factorsthat influence the migrant taking one route rather thananother. Thus, each trajectory is perceived as a product ofcomplex forces.

The migrant trajectory does not describe only the physicaljourney from place A to place B. Rather, migration being alived and embodied phenomenon (Kynsilehto, 2011: 1547),the trajectories are defined also by ‘non-material’ factors,such as traversing identities of gender, ethnicity and class.Indeed, sometimes, as in Haarhaus' work on migrant poetics,the migrant trajectory is analysed with less interest on the

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actual physical movement, as ‘an evolution of subjectivity’(Haarhaus, 2006: ii).

Either way, as Puumala (2012: 36) puts it, ‘migranttrajectories are rarely, if ever simple. What is consistent inthem is almost constant movement’. Yet, when studyingmigrant trajectories, the researcher necessarily halts themovement at the moment of her or his observation. Thismeans that the usage of the term is necessarily specific to thestudy in question: describing a path from one ‘place’ toanother, the migrant trajectory is always an image captioned bythe researcher for specific purposes. It is the researcher and heror his research project that eventually determine thetrajectory's starting point A and its ending point B. Theresearcher also determines, with her or his particularsituated knowledge (Haraway, 1988), which elements ofthe trajectory are to be taken under scrutiny.

In this sense, the migrant trajectory is not somemathematical constant that univocally defines the route ofeach migrant. It is a method(olog)ical tool that can be usedfor several purposes. To me, it is a multifaceted vehicle ofcorporeal relatedness extracted from a space of complexity.As such, the migrant trajectory is not a linear construction.8

As a lived body the migrant carries with her/his embodimenta multiplicity of relations, affects, senses and materialitiesthat extend time as well as space.

When the migrant trajectory is imagined as a body'smovement through space, the body itself is easily reduced toa level of abstraction (cf. Coole & Frost, 2010: 1–2). This isregrettable. It is thus important to remember that themigrant body is always a concretely fleshy, organic andlived body of a human being. The body's ‘movement in space’is made of sweaty armpits in airport queues, for example;nervousness when applying for visas or their extensions;needing to pee just when the official asks you in for a visa orjob interview; a pressing pain somewhere in the abdominals,inner chest, or tear ducts when having to leave to the otherside of the world for work; the incompleteness of the selfwhen unable to touch gently the bodies of the loved ones‘back home’; tears of distance; laughter in the moments ofproximity; controversial feelings of duty, tiredness, frustra-tion and joy when adjusting to a foreign culture, or learning anew language; one's own bodily concrete needs of nurturing.All this is not only involved in the movement but alsogenerative thereof, and applies also to the bodies that themigrant encounters, including the ‘institutional’ ones.

The transformative power of the trajectory is thus notimbued in an individual migrant's subjectivity but in thecapacity of the migrant body to tie together different networksof relatedness, when navigating through the global space. Thetrajectory is, therefore, a ‘crisscrossing movement of the bodyand between bodies’ that transforms the global space. Here, thespaces of agency do not ‘simply pre-exist, but are articulatedthrough bodies' movements’. (Puumala, Väyrynen, Kynsilehto,& Pehkonen, 2011: 86) 9

In the context of this paper, the migrant trajectory is to beunderstood as describing the complex paths of the embodied,relational, gendered and racialised migrant care workers, whomove through the global space. Here, unlike in the GCC model,the structures of GPE do not simply pre-exist as (limited)spaces of agency for the migrant care worker. Instead, themigrant's embodied movement constantly renegotiates its

Please cite this article as: Vaittinen, T., Reading global care chainunderstanding of structural change,Women's Studies International F

space and, thereby, the limits of agency. In the process, theglobal structures themselves become rearticulated.

Daniel's migrant trajectory

Daniel is a 31-year old Filipino registered nurse, whoworks in Finland as a practical nurse. Originally, he wanted tobe a doctor, and his first degree is therefore the Bachelorof Science in Biology, this being a preparatory course formedicine in the Philippines. Medical courses, however, arelengthy and expensive, Daniel tells me. Besides, as a Filipinodoctor, it is difficult to go and work abroad. This is largelywhat educated young people are expected to do in thePhilippines, thanks to the country's role in GPE as a labourexporting country (e.g., Choy, 2003; Guevarra, 2009). In 2001and 2002, however, the nursing courses in the Philippinesexpanded, ‘because of the, you can say, global need of nurses,especially in America’, Daniel explains. At the time, also moreand more men started to take nursing degrees. ‘So I'm oneof them’, he says, explaining his choice of a feminisedprofession.

Thus, after receiving the Bachelors in Biology in 2005,Daniel did a degree in practical nursing, which could then be‘upgraded’ to registered nursing through an 8-month longcourse. Both the nursing degrees followed an Americancurriculum. The latter was also sponsored by a US nursinghome that had a Filipino ownership, and was helping Filipinonurses to migrate. When graduating as a registered nurse in2007, it was thus all meant to be set for Daniel to move to theUS. Before the plan materialised however, came the globaleconomic crisis. The American care home that was Daniel'ssponsor and future employer went bankrupt. The ‘global carechain’ that was in the making fell apart (interview withDaniel — 17 April, 2012).

Around the same time in Finland, a Filipino nurse, Anna, wasinvolved with plans of recruiting newly graduate Filipinonurses to a Finnish vocational school to do a degree programmein practical nursing. Anna had migrated several years agobecause of marrying a Finn, and she is also a nurse. Over theyears, Annahad dreamed of seeing fellow Filipinos ‘roaming thestreets’ of her small town and of having Filipino colleagues inthe often racist work places she had experienced. The idea torecruit Filipinos to this particular degree programme, however,came from the school's principal, who had contacted Anna forhelp (interview with Anna — 16 April, 2012).

Like all European states, also Finland is facing a severedemographic care deficit due to its ageing population. Thesolution for the care crisis is seen in labour immigration. Theprincipal of this particular vocational school was clear that, inthe future, elder care would mainly be the work of migrants.Metaphorically, the principal says, she had thought aboutherself growing old. Putting herself in the position of a carereceiver, she asked herself who she would want to take careof her in her later life. The wider question here was whichkinds of migrantswould guarantee a good level of care for theageing Finns. Impressed by the caring attitude of two Filipinonurses studying practical nursing at the school, the principalwas assured that ‘her carer’ would have to be a Filipino (fieldnotes 15 September, 2011 on a non-taped discussion withthe principal).

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8 T. Vaittinen / Women's Studies International Forum xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

The existing Filipino community in Finland is small,however, and the migration regime remains tight. Theboundaries of the national nursing profession are particularlystrictly guarded, and it is extremely difficult for internation-ally qualified nurses to enter the national nursing labourmarket (Nieminen, 2011). Thus, measures were taken to turnthe school and its practical nursing programme into a gatethrough which Filipino nurses could enter Finland. In otherwords, the school was turned into a critical node of a new globalcare chain.

Through Anna, the school established links with twonursing colleges in the Philippines. Anna and the principalalso visited these colleges, advertising the programmepersonally to the college staff and, via the staff, to youngFilipino nurse graduates and their families. One of the twoinstitutions visited was the college where Daniel hadgraduated.

At this time in the Philippines, Daniel was going throughhis options for future employment, now that his dream ofgoing to the US had fallen apart. One day, the collegecontacted him and told him about the possibility of movingto Finland to study practical nursing. He and his friendapplied, they both were accepted in the programme, andafter a half a year they migrated to Finland as internationaldegree students. In the same class with Daniel and his friend,there were also other nurses from the Philippines as well asfrom India. Later, another ‘batch’ of Filipinos and Indiansfollowed. All Daniel knew about Finland when migrating wasNokia, the mobile phone company.

After one and a half years at the school, however, Danielgraduated with yet another degree — this time practicalnursing, Finnish curriculum. He has been employed in thesame privately owned nursing home ever since, now with apermanent contract. There, he is one of Anna's Filipinocolleagues. He remits about a fifth of his salary back to thePhilippines, where he does not have children, but supportshis parents' daily living as well as pays their medical bills,when necessary. At the time of our interview, for instance, hismother had been recently injured and Daniel had paid hertreatments in a private hospital. Sometimes he says tosupport also the members of extended family, aunt forexample, and of course his younger siblings, two of whomremain in the Philippines. He has recently gotten married tohis Filipino wife, who works as a nurse in Asia. The marriagewas sealed during the girlfriend's few weeks' holiday inFinland, and they look for ways of bringing her to the countryas well. Given the strict migration and professional regimesin Finland, this is likely to be difficult.

Discussion

Like DoreenMassey, I perceive the global space as ‘concrete,grounded and real’ (Massey, 2004: 7), in the sense that it isconstructed in and through concrete, embodied relationsbetween concrete localities. The localities that are of interestin this paper are the ‘nodes’ of the global care chains (see Fig. 2above): that is, families and extended families, educationalinstitutions, training bodies, recruitment and migration agen-cies, work places and financial institutions through and pastwhich the migrant care worker moves, while making care tomove globally from one place to another. All such nodes are,

Please cite this article as: Vaittinen, T., Reading global care chaiunderstanding of structural change,Women's Studies International F

following Massey (2004: 6), locations of ‘the intersection ofdisparate trajectories’ and hence ‘necessarily places of “negoti-ation” in the widest sense of the term’.

In the narrative above, there are several nodes in whichDaniel's migrant trajectory intersects with other trajectoriesin ways that transform the global care economy on themicro-level. The American nursing home that sponsoredhis degrees in the Philippines and its Filipino ownershiprepresent nodes of potential: they almost created a ‘globalnursing care chain’ through which Daniel could havemigrated. But then, the global economic crisis hit thisnode of intersection, loosening its connection with Daniel'strajectory. Daniel could never ‘move along’ this potentialchain, since it fell apart. In fact, this particular global carechain could not materialise, because of the lack of Daniel'sembodied movement.

Instead, elsewhere, another node started to take shape, asAnna's migrant trajectory approached that of Daniel's. Thishappened after a principal of a Finnish vocational schoolreflected on her own trajectory of ageing, pondering whoshould move to and with her when her own body growsso old that it can only stay put (cf. Vaittinen, in press).These trajectories – Daniel's, Anna's, the principal's and thetwo Filipino nurses' who impressed the principal in the firstplace – intersected via the nursing colleges in the Philippines,and eventually at the Finnish vocational school. Consequent-ly, the last mentioned emerged as a concrete point of entry toFinland for Daniel and his classmates, as well as to the nursesthat migrated in the second ‘batch’ two years later. Inhindsight, the school may appear as a singular node of aglobal ‘chain’ through which the nurses moved. Yet, thenode did not pre-exist the nurses' movement. Until it wasdesignated as a potential migration route by Anna and theprincipal, the school was but a secondary level educationalinstitution providing practical nursing degrees in English.The school materialised as a concrete node of a globalnursing care chain only because Daniel and others ‘movedthrough’ it.

As far as I know, this particular migration route is nowclosed, and no new classes are to be recruited. Thus, the‘chains along which the global care workers move’ are notonly constantly made; they can also be unmade. Consequent-ly, at least the migrant trajectory of Daniel's wife must findsome other way to Finland, thereby producing another kindof a GCC and, indeed, another configuration for a global careeconomy.

Conclusion: how migrant trajectories (re)makethe structures

While moving, each migrant care worker carries with her/him a whole range of relations as do the various actors she/heencounters on the way. Paraphrasing Kynsilehto's note onskills (2011a: 1548), it is not simply care ‘that cross[es]international borders […], but corporeal beings with aspira-tions, networks of family and friends and personal historiesof their own’. In this regard, the embodied migrant movingthrough the global space is her/himself an intersection ofdisparate trajectories, indeed a site of negotiation: both as asite where the negotiation takes place and as an object ofnegotiation (e.g., Puumala & Pehkonen, 2010; Puumala et

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9T. Vaittinen / Women's Studies International Forum xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

al., 2011). This multiplicity of concretely lived, space-timerelatedness moves with the migrant body, intersecting withother trajectories of movement. This process, all encounters,controversies and troubles included, necessitates constantnegotiations on what the global space should look like.

Paying attention to such ‘negotiations’ in individualmigrant trajectories, I argue, can help us to understandchange in the global care economy and, consequently, in theGPE as a whole. Regarding the individual migrant trajecto-ries' power to rupture the structures, what count in particularare those moments where the trajectory is challenged byinstitutional ‘gatekeepers’, which the migrant needs to passin one way or another. What such gatekeepers are dependson the particular trajectory in question and its historical andterritorial situatedness in the global configuration (see alsoErel, 2009).

For example, when talking about global care workers, inprinciple we talk about ‘labour migrants’. Yet, because of thestrictly guarded professional and state boundaries of the hostcountries and the EU (e.g., Nieminen, 2011), we know thatmany global care workers cannot utilise an official route tothe labour markets they aim at, let alone enter exactly thatprofessional niche where she/he is educated in the homecountry (Cuban, 2013). In other words, not all migrant careworkers can simply ‘move along’ the chain as Yeatesdescribes. Nevertheless, people migrate, and many do soprimarily for employment purposes. It may mean enteringthe country by ‘irregular’ means, for instance; migrating witha tourist visa though in search for work; or utilising aninternational degree programme and a student visa as a routeto a particular country's labour markets, as in the case ofDaniel and his classmates.

As for GCCs, a migrant care worker may first try out one ofthe more established routes, just like Daniel did with hisoriginal plans of going to the US. Because of the globalrecession, his intended ‘chain’ of migration was broken,however, and he could no longer move ‘through’ it to theUS. He then came across another way, a whole newdestination country which he knew nothing about and,indeed, a completely new route of migration that openedup with the student visa.

It is entirely possible to analyse Daniel's and his family'sposition in the global political economy through the prism ofthe global care chain. Now that Daniel is in Finland, remittingmoney for his mother's hospital bills while caring for ageingFinns in a private nursing home, the global care chaincertainly ‘exists’, reminding us about the global structuralinequality that seems overarching and insurmountable. Yet,this particular care chain did not exist until Daniel's migranttrajectory made it to become. In this regard, it is perhaps bestto think the global care chains as existing in potential only, assomething that become materialised in the migrant trajecto-ries. Potentialities are not insurmountable. Potentialities arenot carved in stone. Instead, they are sites of turbulence;constant openings of change within the emergent materialconfigurations of GPE.

Daniel's trajectory exemplifies how the structural makingof the global care economy is also intersectionally complex. Inthe traditional GCC analyses, the migrant trajectories ofinterest are usually drawn by women, or racialised men,who migrate from a Southern ‘care-exporting’ country to a

Please cite this article as: Vaittinen, T., Reading global care chainunderstanding of structural change,Women's Studies International F

Northern country accustomed to ‘importing’ care. Yet, theselection of countries and the intersectional identities in-volved are not to be taken for granted (cf. Puar, 2012). They,too, are constantly being reconfigured in the migranttrajectories. Daniel's trajectory, for instance, exemplifies thetrends of gendered change where the traditionally femaleprofession of nursing, in the particular context of thePhilippines, is gradually restructured as a potential maleprofession. Undoubtedly, these changes are part and parcel ofthe societal developments in the North that construct careand nursing as ‘migrant's work’. However, as the principal'spondering about the most preferable carers illustrate, thesekinds of ethnicised and racialised divisions of labour do notarise naturally from the structures. They, too, are activelybeing made, in concrete encounters between embodiedactors. In these global processes, more and more countriesseem to get involved in the ‘global care chains’. Finland, forinstance, has virtually no history of international nurserecruitment (Bourgeault & Wrede, 2008). Yet, along withnew migrant trajectories – such as that of Daniel's – thishistory is slowly starting to get formed.

The migrant trajectories of global care workers alwaysmake a unique set of connections— not completely unrelatedwith other similar trajectories, yet never completely identical.No one simply ‘moves along’ the structures as Yeates puts it,but every body takes her/his own path, in and through thestructures that both restrain and enable the movement. Mostcertainly, there are institutional constraints that delimit themigrant care workers' agency as they navigate the globalstructures. Indeed, as Daniel's wife's difficulty to move toFinland exemplifies, the (inter)national migration, labourand care regulations form concrete frontiers, which themigrant must recognise and appreciate. Yet, no migrant eversimply flows forward in these regimes: the global care chainnever simply exists. It always has to be made — and madeagain. In this process, disparate trajectories intersect. At theintersections, the global care economy is constantly beingshaped anew. Furthermore, when the global care economychanges, so do the wider structures of GPE that depend oncare for their very ‘existence’.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the two anonymous referees and theSpecial Issue Editors for their constructive comments on theprevious versions of the article. Thanks also to the participantsof the various seminars and workshops in which the manu-script was presented; your comments have been irreplaceable.Special thanks go to all my research participants, who havemade writing this article possible in the first place. I remainindebted. Financially, the research has been enabled by theFinnish Academy project ‘The Body Politic of Migration:Embodied and Silent Choreographies of Political Agency’ (SA132403) and a scholarship from the Eino Jutikkala Fundgoverned by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Endnotes

1 The acronym GPE (in capitals) is often used as a reference to thetransdisciplinary field of studying the political economy on the global scale(Palan, 2000: 1). Here, however, I use it mainly as a reference to the

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10 T. Vaittinen / Women's Studies International Forum xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

globalised structures of political economy, not so much for the scholarlycommunity who study these structures.

2 Although this can be criticised as simplifying and universalising themeanings of care (Raghuram, 2012), I argue that one way of following theglobal ‘movement of care’ is to follow the embodied movement of carelabourers in the global political economy.

3 The global care chain tradition overlaps with a larger body of work ontransnational care, and often the terms ‘global’ and ‘transnational’ are usedinterchangeably (e.g., Mahon & Robinson, 2011). The same applies to myargumentation and indeed to feminist sightings on GPE more generally(e.g., Marchand & Runyan, 2000). I see it also politically important to studythe transnational lives in the name of ‘the global’. This helps us to deconstructthe myth that the ‘global’ would be something larger than life, a realm ofabstraction that is ‘generated outside our own (immediate) environment’(Marchand and Runyan, 2000: 7). The global is not larger than life; it is shapedby and dependent on life.

4 All names are pseudonyms.5 I have not interviewed all members of this group, but one of the two

classes in question has participated in my ethnographic fieldwork at theschool. In addition to this group, I have interviewed some Filipino nurseswho have migrated because of marriage rather than work; followed thesituation of Filipino nurse recruitment in Finland; and interviewed one malenurse recruit, as well as officials and employers with interests in the policiesof nurse migration in Finland.

6 The ethnographic material gathered in these nurses' daily lives isrelatively thin, consisting of bi-monthly rather than weekly visits andsporadic social media contact in between. For the study of their migranttrajectories, however, I consider the nurses' life-story interviews as myprimary research material, whilst the analysis is supported by otherethnographic material, including interviews with Finnish and Filipinoofficials and employers.

7 The origins of the GCC lie partly in the concept of global value chains,which ‘focuses on a series of activities involved in the production andconsumption of manufactured products, including the coordination of thoseactivities […] and the distribution of risks, costs and profits’ (Yeates, 2009:43). The value chain has been used particularly in the global commoditychain analysis. Here, the focus is on ‘the emergence and consequences of aglobal manufacturing system’ (Yeates, 2009: 43), where commodities areproduced by internationally dispersed yet coordinated and hierarchicallyordered chains of networks. There are two strands of commodity chainanalysis. Whilst the first builds on world systems theory, Yeates drawsparticularly on the ‘production network perspective’. Here, the emphasis ison firms as ‘key actors’, and commodity chains are analysed across the threedimensions of inputs/outputs, territoriality and governance (Yeates, 2009:44). In Yeates' model of global care chains, the key actors are of course not(only) firms, but the various institutional actors who are involved in theglobal production and reproduction of care. Yeates recognises the problemsof paralleling care with commodities (Yeates, 2009: 55–59), and herextended GCC model is thus a modification of both the original GCCapproach and the global commodity chain analysis.

8 To see what works for me as a visual metaphor of the complexity of themigrant trajectory (i.e. the GCC) in the global space, please use an internetsearch engine and search for an image of a ‘calabi yau’ which, in thesuperstring theory for instance, depicts the extra dimensions of space-time.

9 Puumala, Väyrynen, Kynsilehto and Pehkonen (2011: 86; alsoPuumala and Pehkonen, 2010), prefer the term ‘choreography’ to movementwhen describing the migrant body's political potential. This is because thelatter ‘is often understood as something solipsistic, topographic, mechanicaland linear, whereas the notion of choreography implies non-linearembodied relationality, extending and reaching out towards others.’ Theirdiscussion is placed in empirically and theoretically different context frommine, but it helps to imagine the migrant trajectory as complex andpolitically transformative. Due to reasons of clarity, I continue to speak aboutthe global movement of care in this article, although we might as well speakabout the global choreographies of care.

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