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Transacting Care Transnationally: Remittances and Agency Within Global Care Chains

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Migration and Social Remittances in a Global Europe

Part of the book series: Europe in a Global Context ((EGC))

Abstract

This chapter deals with the global care chains running between the Basque Country of Spain and different localities in Bolivia. It particularly looks at how care is transacted as remittances within transnational family constellations. The resources for these transactions are obtained both through the paid care work migrant women undertake in their place of destination, and through the agency they exercise through their social relations. It is argued that agency in this context is more about maneuvering the structures in place within one’s life than overtly resisting them. To illustrate, the author draws on examples of how her informants use the very gendered and racialised elements of their disadvantaged emplacement within legal and sociocultural structures as ways to reach goals within their own ‘migration projects’.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Autorizaciones de residencia por circumstancias excepcionales.

  2. 2.

    Supuestos de arraigo.

  3. 3.

    A live-in domestic/care worker.

  4. 4.

    Hija literally means ‘daughter’ in Spanish, but is commonly used affectionately in social relationships.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

    Ingrid Jerve Ramsøy

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  1. Ingrid Jerve Ramsøy
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Magdalena Nowicka

  2. Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Vojin Šerbedžija

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Ramsøy, I.J. (2016). Transacting Care Transnationally: Remittances and Agency Within Global Care Chains. In: Nowicka, M., Šerbedžija, V. (eds) Migration and Social Remittances in a Global Europe. Europe in a Global Context. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60126-1_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60126-1_9

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-60125-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-60126-1

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