Social reproduction theory and global care chains

This thesis traces the evolution and complexity of global care chains and migrant domestic workers' contemporary experiences of oppression and exploitation in the domestic sphere. It compares the perspectives of social reproduction theories and reveals the scope and emancipatory potential of these theories. For example, an approach that equates the oppression and exploitation of migrant women with the workers' exploitation may ignore other categories of oppression. In this thesis, I first analyze domestic exploitation by examining Marxist economic reproduction theory. Second, I analyze affective labor by examining these relations from an intersectional feminist perspective. These two examinations reveal two different responses: wage labor in the workplace as exploitation and domestic labor, both paid and unpaid, as oppression. Finally, I attempt to bring these two paradigms into a dialectical relationship by focusing on the social reproduction theories.