7 - Global body work markets

Summary

Introduction

The global market in services is growing rapidly, constituting an increasing part of the global economy. Due to enduring gender assumptions, women form the majority of the service workers who provide body work. Women now migrate in substantial numbers from transitional and southern economies, not as ‘dependent’ family members but primarily to fill deficits in consumer economies. This chapter concentrates on elements in the governance of global body work chains: the ‘external’ macroeconomic and international institutional frameworks; state-based regulation of immigration and labour laws; the particular regulatory framework in which the body work is performed; and the ‘internal’ processes associated with the specific chains. These overlap and interact to create an often highly complex and plural framework of regulation that contributes to the distribution of the risks and benefits associated with body work chains. They may increase the vulnerability of women migrants to exploitation and ensure that most of the gains are reaped by Global North states, their citizens and a variety of entrepreneurs to the detriment of individual migrants, their home communities and states. Alternatively they may provide a degree of protection and support for migrant workers so that they benefit as individuals and also offset the depletion of social capital (the value of resources that arise from social relationships such as trust and reciprocity) which results when individuals leave their families and communities to work in another society. These ‘horizontal’ regulatory processes interact with the ‘vertical’ regulatory contexts in both the ‘sending’ jurisdictions (Chapter 6) and the ‘receiving’ one (Chapter 3). The domestic institutional context for the provision of the body work, whether supplied through a public body, such as a hospital or nursing home, or a private household, affects the forms of regulation associated with it and also the status of the suppliers of that care.