Abstract
The metaphor of “care drain” has been created as a womanly parallel to the “brain drain” idea. Just as “brain drain” suggests that the skilled migrants are an economic loss for the sending country, “care drain” describes the migrant women hired as care workers as a loss of care for their children left behind. This paper criticizes the construction of migrant women as “care drain” for three reasons: 1) it is built on sexist stereotypes, 2) it misrepresents and devalues care work, and 3) it misses the opportunity for a theoretical change about how skills in migration contexts can be understood.
Highlights
Research focusing on women's condition and emphasizing the value of care generally has been a driver of social change toward more gender equality
A case study for methodological sexism is provided by the construction of women's labor migration as “care drain”, a womanly parallel of “brain drain”
Studying the way in which solo migrant workers like Rowena are fulfilling, or not, their traditional family roles is not a sexist choice per se. It becomes sexist when three methodological assumptions are made: i) women are studied only as caregivers, ii) only women are studied as caregivers and iii) women's failure to fulfill their traditional family roles is judged regrettable
Summary
From “brain drain” to “care drain” : Women’s labor migration and methodological sexism. Women’s Studies International Forum, Elsevier, 2014, Gender, Mobility and Social Change, 47 (November-december), pp.203212. HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés
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