GLOBAL CARE CHAINS AND SOCIAL UNDOCUMENTATION: BELONGING, RECOGNITION, AND MIGRANT CARE WORK

Abstract

This article examines global care chains through the relationship between labor, belonging, and social undocumentedness. It aims to discuss the extent to which the relations of dependency, proximity, and inequality that structure care work performed by migrant women may also participate in social processes of classification and recognition associated with undocumentedness. Methodologically, the article develops a theoretical and bibliographic analysis, bringing together the literature on global care chains with contributions from feminist theories of migrant justice and debates on illegality and social undocumentedness. It draws particularly on Hochschild (2000), Parreñas (2015), and Yeates (2012) to characterize inequalities within global care chains; Young (1990), Wolf (2025), and Anderson (1999) to examine oppression, relational inequality, and belonging; and De Genova (2002) and Reed-Sandoval (2020) to discuss the social production of illegality and undocumentedness. The article argues that global care chains constitute social contexts in which participation and indispensability may coexist with hierarchical forms of belonging. The concept of social undocumentedness adds to this analysis the possibility that processes of classification and recognition may extend beyond formal immigration status.