Care Activism

Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building, and Communities of Care

Ethel Tungohan

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780252087400, 9780252045264
• eBook ISBN: 9780252054785
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Labour & Industrial Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

Care activism challenges the stereotype of downtrodden migrant caregivers by showing that care workers have distinct ways of caring for themselves, for each other, and for the larger transnational community of care workers and their families. Ethel Tungohan illuminates how the goals and desires of migrant care worker activists goes beyond political considerations like policy changes and overturning power structures. Through practices of subversive friendships and being there for each other, care activism acts as an extension of the daily work that caregivers do, oftentimes also instilling practices of resistance and critical hope among care workers. At the same time, the communities created by care activism help migrant caregivers survive and even thrive in the face of arduous working and living conditions and the pains surrounding family separation. As Tungohan shows, care activism also unifies caregivers to resist society's legal and economic devaluations of care and domestic work by reaffirming a belief that they, and what they do, are important and necessary.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Care Activism and Communities of Care
• 1 Contextualizing Care Activism
• 2 Care Activism within Migrant Advocacy Organizations
• 3 Scaling Up Care Activism in Transnational Spaces
• 4 Care Activism in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Singapore
• 5 Everyday Care Activism
• Conclusion: Toward a Politics of Critical Hope and Care
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Back Cover