Care mobilises individuals globally. People migrate to provide for their families, especially to pay for children’s education and to cover health care costs, while care needs in the global North mobilise large-scale global labour migrations. Transnational migration transforms informal care, i.e., unpaid care provided by lay people and consequently, gender relations, familial hierarchies and gender expectations.
Migrant workers care practices and mobilities (CaringLabour 2025-2027) is a three-year research project that studies how migration transforms informal care practices and what kind of cross-border and local mobilities emerge from care needs. The project offers new empirical knowledge on migrant workers’ informal care practices locally and transnationally, paying attention to mobilities, citizenship hierarchies and racialisation processes. It advances multimodal research and conceptualisation of informal care and mobilities in migration contexts.
The research creates more varied narratives of labour migration through collaboration with photography and journalism. The project involves a collaborative effort between researchers, a photographer and a journalist. It aims to capture the simultaneously embodied and virtual practices of care and mobilities that emerge from local and transnational care needs in various visual and textual forms. The project disseminates its findings through various channels: a podcast series a multimedia exhibition, a creative nonfiction book, academic peer-reviewed articles and a PhD dissertation.
The findings will enhance societal understanding of migrant experiences. They challenge perceptions of migrants as mere economic assets or liabilities and may advocate for institutional and political changes that support migrants’ family life.
CaringLabour has four research objectives (RO):
RO1. To generate new empirical knowledge on migrant workers’ informal care practices locally and transnationally, paying attention to mobilities, citizenship hierarchies and racialisation processes.
RO2. To advance multimodal research methods by combining individual interviews and focus groups with connective and mobile ethnographic methods and participatory photography.
RO3. To advance conceptualisation of informal care and mobilities in migration contexts.
RO4. To create more varied narratives and imaginaries of labour migration through the research collaboration with photography and journalism.
We aim to achieve these objectives by answering the following research questions:
1. How do migrant workers recognise the need for care, including their own care needs (caring about), assume responsibility and negotiate care activities as a response to care needs (caring for) locally and transnationally using various skills, resources and material affordances? (RO1)
2. How are caregiving and -receiving practices and mobilities structured by gender, ‘race’, citizenship hierarchies and how do these relate to spaces and relations at work and its routines? (RO1)
3. In which ways can multimodal methods capture the informal care practices and mobilities in local and transnational contexts (RO2)?
4. How do migrant workers define informal care and its role in their migratory trajectories? (RO3)
5. In which ways can migrants’ informal and self-care practices and mobilities be best captured using the multimodal research methods combined with photography and journalism? (RO4)
The project draws on multi-sited, blended ethnographic methods and materials to capture cross-border practices of care as well as its required preconditions. The various methods we engage include
1) narrative interviews and follow-up interviews involving multimodal methods
2) focus group interviews and
3) connective and mobile ethnographic methods.