Beyond the Global Care Chain: Boundaries, Institutions and Ethics of Care

Abstract

Revisiting the Global Care Chain literature, we reflect on the ways in which care functions as a moral discourse that simultaneously resonates with local people and helps to promote neoliberalization in contexts that are often left out of the literature. We argue that care, both as concept and practice, inflects the broadest moral contradiction, ambivalence and hybridity of our social and political world today. Critiques of inequalities in global caring, therefore, need to pay attention to the moralization that is part of the neoliberal worldview and the ways in which it meshes with locally meaningful ideas and practices of care.