COVID-19, Global Care, and Migration

Ito Peng’s chapter in From Crisis to Catastrophe: Care, Covid, and Pathways to Change is entitled “COVID-19, Global Care, and Migration.” In it, she explains that gender inequality is built into care systems around the world. Under neoliberalism, care is further devalued and commodified, shaping patterns of global migration and pushing care workers around the world into precarious, vulnerable positions. To transform our care systems, we need to adopt the 4 R principles — recognize, reduce, redistribute, and revalue unpaid care work.

Citation

Peng, I. (2023). COVID-19, Global Care, and Migration. In From Crisis to Catastrophe (pp. 27–35). Rutgers University Press. https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978828599-005

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world awake to the importance of care and carework, and the reality of the global care interdependence hinged on multidimensional gender and global inequalities unlike any other crises of the past century. But because of this, it has also created an opening for us to rethink care and migration, and to push for transformative changes. As we move beyond the second year of the pandemic we must learn from this experience and seize this opportunity to institute the four R principles in our daily lives and to push for institutional and policy changes and more equality-inducing policies for global care migration.

Ito Peng