world systems theory specifies not only that international migra- tion should flow from periphery to core along paths of capital investment, but also that it is directed to certain "global cities" that channel and control foreign investment.

prior colonial relationships

World systems theory thus argues that international migration follows the political and economic organization of an expanding global market, a view that yields six distinct hypotheses

Poorly educated natives resist taking low-paying jobs at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy, creating a strong demand for immigrants

the international movement of labor generally follows the international movement of goods and capital in the opposite direction.

he insertion of foreign-owned factories into peripheral regions thus undermines the peasant economy by producing goods that compete with those made locally; by feminizing the workforce without providing factory-based employment oppor- tunities for men; and by socializing women for industrial work and modem consumption, albeit without providing a lifetime income capable of meeting these needs. The result is the creation of a population that is socially and eco- nomically uprooted and prone to migration.

ever-larger portions of the globe and growing shares of the human population have been incorporated into the world market economy

migration is a natural outgrowth of disruptions and dislocations that inevitably occur in the process of capitalist development

world systems theory generally ignore such micro-level decision processes, focusing instead on forces operating at much higher levels of aggregati

States have always been subjected to larger geopolitical and eco-nomic forces in the world system,

The core-periphery hierarchy remains, though some countries have moved up or down.

Thus, all the countries that became hegemonic core states in the modern system had formerly been semiperipheral (The Netherlands, England, and the United States)

as well as providing stability and global leadership

t is not possible to understand the history of institutional change without taking into account both the strate-gies and technologies of the winners and the strate-gies and forms of struggle of those who have resisted domination and exploitation.

dominant core societies (themselves in competition with one another)

development of technologies of trans-portation and communications,

important interaction networks (trade, information flows, alliances, and fighting)

human institutions over long periods of time and employs the spatial scales that are required for comprehending these whole inter-action systems.

focuses on whole intersocietal systems rather than single societies

A country’s population and immigration patterns do influence the rate of environmental degradation, but they have much less impact than do consumption patterns of wealthier segments of the population and especially the production practices of industries.

go beyond the cost-benefit approach and to pursue these issues from a human and worker rights perspective

e extraction of resources by the United States and other First World nations forces many people in the ird World to migrate to follow their countries’ wealth.4

hese women’s labor—caring for the young, elderly, sick, and disabled—makes possible the maintenance and reproduction of the American labor force at virtually no cost to the US government

he goal of these laws and “reforms” is to extract the benefits of immigrants’ labor while minimiz-ing or eliminating any obligations or costs, whether social or fiscal, to the “host” US society and state.

Immigrants’ social reproduction is perhaps even more threatening, since it implies a transformation of “American” culture,

n conjunction, , the , and the aftermath of Proposition 187 served to reinstitute many of the worst measures aimed at regulating poor women of color and immigrant women, as well as their labor and reproduction

also reduced judicial discretion in immigration matters, resulting in the automatic deportation of immigrants convicted of even minor crimes.

about $24 billion, was achieved by continued restrictions on the receipt of any aid except emergency assistance by undocumented immigrants, and by new restrictions on the receipt of food stamps and Supplemental Security Income () by documented immigrants.

e  eliminated several entitlement programs and transformed them into block grants to the states, resulting in drastically reduced funding for these programs and, more importantly, the end of the principle of guaranteed cash assis-tance for poor children in effect under federal law since the New Deal.

ollowing its passage, a twelve-year-old boy and an elderly woman died because they were afraid they would be deported if they sought treatment.

After months of mediation,

Once here, he suggested, they gain easy access to medical care and a range of benefits and services for their babies, including welfare, food stamps, nutrition programs, and public housing

women are seen as responsible for reproduction and consumption, they are blamed for the strains thought to be imposed by immigrants on public resources.

women tend to advocate and mobilize families toward permanent settlement in the United States. She suggests that US xenophobia has come to focus on women because they are per-ceived as the leaders of this threatening demographic trend.

to a de facto permanent Mexican immigrant population including more women, children, and entire families.9

Such “findings” are almost always coupled with statements about higher birthrates among immigrant women and the threat they pose to controlling population growth.

effectively create situations of debt bond-age such that these indebted nations must surrender their citizens, espe-cially women, as migrant laborers to First World nations in the desperate effort to keep up with debt payments and to sustain their remaining citi-zens through these overseas workers’ remittances

austerity programs

First World countries rou-tinely make deliberate economic interventions to facilitate their contin-ued extraction of ird World resources, including and especially people.

migra-tion is rooted in the creation of linkages between sending and receiv-ing countries through foreign investment and military interventions by First World countries in the ird World.

does not serve to explain, for example, situations in which economic “development” in some of the largest sending countries does not actually deter emigration.

the result of First World economic and military interventions.

a calculated pull by the United States and other First World coun-tries on the ird World’s most valuable remaining resource: human labor

e attraction is jobs. ese jobs, however hazardous and low pay-ing, are still preferable to the poverty most migrants are escaping in their home countries, often the result of First World imperialism.

migra-tion by people within the ird World is far more common than the movement of ird World citizens to the First World.

Introduction

First, being in the middle of the international division of reproductive labor involves experiencing the pain of family separation. Second, being in the middle also means being part of the Philippine middle class.

instead, they have had to rely on their race and/or class privilege by participating in the transnational transfer of gender constraints to less privileged women.

The concept of the international division of reproductive labor establishes that women’s migration is a movement from one distinct patriarchal system to another, bound by race and class, in transnational capitalism.

nonnative

encompasses the “array of activities and relationships involved in maintaining people both on a daily basis and intergenerationally”

Carmen’s wages easily enable her to hire a domestic worker in the Philippines, who usually earns below-poverty wages.

I am a little bit luckier than others because I run the entire household.

The mobility of the Filipina migrant domestic worker and her family is, for the most part, depen-dent on the greater mobility of the employing family.

women in the Philippines have far fewer material resources to ensure the reproduction of their own family

Freed of household con-straints, those on top can earn more and consequently afford better-quality care than can the domestic workers they hire.

The international division of reproductive labor refers to a social, politi-cal, and economic relationship between women in the global labor market.

he process involves escaping their gendered responsibilities in the Philippines, easing the gender constraints of women who employ them in industrialized countries, and finally relegating their familial responsibilities to women left in the Philippines

or poorer female relatives, in the Philippines who are often too poor to migrate.

they leave their own dependents to be cared for mostly by other women in the Philippines

different geopolitical scales of migration, including regional migration, for in-stance linking households in Hong Kong and the Philippines; south-to-south migration, tying families in Kuwait and the Philippines; and lastly south-to-north or global migration, connecting women, households, and families be-tween the Philippines and various nations in the Global North

I felt homesick for my children, but I also felt free for being able to escape the most dire problem that was slowly killing me

from persisting gender inequalities in the families of these professionals.6

As Glenn points out, women of color help more privileged women negotiate the unequal gender division of labor in their families.

They free their female employers of housework, allowing them to avoid demanding a fairer division of labor with their partners and at the same time enabling them to participate in the labor force

Domestics here are able to make a living from the elderly that families abandon.

women tend to log fewer paid hours than their male counterparts

In the case of Italy, it has been argued that women are turning away from reproducing families and concentrating on their advancement in the labor market

we must equally consider the system of gender inequality in receiving countries

Thus, it is this gender inequality that places these women in a position of needing to migrate for economic reasons.

public school teacher:

Legal restrictions and the burden of cultural expectations (for example, the tremendous value placed on family cohesion for the children’s benefit and the immense influence of Catholicism) constrain the options women have for leaving abusive spouses permanently

Because they have more means than others do to migrate, educated women in the Philippines may turn to employment opportunities outside the Philippines to negotiate their low wages

In 2012, women saw an increase in their rate of labor-market participation to 49.7

o one of the reasons I came here was for my family. . . . I came here also for the change. I was very tired. I was sick of the routine I was in

Migrating to negotiate the unequal division of labor in the family applies not only to mothers and wives but also to single and childless women

independent mi-gration frees working women of household constraints, migration is not only a family strategy but also a covert strategy to relieve women of their unequal division of labor with men in the family.

Yet the meaning of migration as a strategy of family main-tenance is very different for men and women. By migrating to sustain the household, women reconstitute the traditional gender division of labor in the family as they take on the role of income provider.

As ideological constructs of feminine identity are molded from mothering and caring roles in the domes-tic arena, the independent migration of women constitutes a direct liberation from them

it is important that we account for gender and identify the different meanings of “economic” migration for them. Gender, as I illustrate, is a hidden cause of migration

by nar-rowing the framework to the distribution of care and redirecting the focus away from reproductive inequalities.

I establish that global capitalism, patriarchy, and racial inequalities are structural forces that jointly determine the subject-positions of migrant Filipina domestic workers in globalization

To develop my argument, I first analyze the gender constraints that confront migrant Filipina domestic workers in both the send-ing nation of the Philippines and the receiving nations of the United States and Italy. I then illustrate how these gender constraints lead to the international division of reproductive labor.

Whereas class-privileged women purchase the low-wage household services of migrant Filipina domestic workers, these women simultaneously purchase the even lower-wage household services of poorer women left behind in the Philippines.

How do we systematically include gender in our analysis of the political economy of migration?

chapter two