Much current literature on women and migration tends to approach the study of migrant domestic workers as victims of global capitalism—or according to Parrenas’s evocative phrase as “servants of globalization”—from one of two vantage points. The first vantage point focuses attention on how the conditions of exit in various sending countries make overseas domestic servitude one of the few employment opportunities available for many women (Parrenas 2001). The second draws attention to the ways in which these migrant women experience stratification—along the lines of gender, race, and class—as part of their settlement experiences in their host countries (Pratt 1998). Both of these vantage points reinforce aspects of the “servants of globalization” discourse in that they pay relatively little attention to the coping practices of migrant domestic workers. In order to extend the thesis beyond the “servants of globalization” discourse, this thesis examines the coping practices that migrant Filipina domestic workers develop in their efforts to create communities of affirmation, care, and belonging.

Much current literature on women and migration tends to approach the study of migrant domestic workers as victims of global capitalism—or according to Parrenas’s evocative phrase as “servants of globalization”—from one of two vantage points. The first vantage point focuses attention on how the conditions of exit in various sending countries make overseas domestic servitude one of the few employment opportunities available for many women (Parrenas 2001). The second draws attention to the ways in which these migrant women experience stratification—along the lines of gender, race, and class—as part of their settlement experiences in their host countries (Pratt 1998). Both of these vantage points reinforce aspects of the “servants of globalization” discourse in that they pay relatively little attention to the coping practices of migrant domestic workers. In order to extend the thesis beyond the “servants of globalization” discourse, this thesis examines the coping practices that migrant Filipina domestic workers develop in their efforts to create communities of affirmation, care, and belonging.

In recent decades, care ethics has become more visible in discussions of contemporary moral problems; however, longstanding ethical theories such as deontology and utilitarianism remain prominent in discussing controversial contemporary issues. I show the relevance of care ethics in discussions of globalization, especially regarding care ethics's applicability to the problem of "global care chains." Global care chains form when a person from a developing nation, usually a female, emigrates to serve as a fulltime nanny or housekeeper for a middle or upper class household. Her remittances pay for another care worker to replace her at home during her absence. This chain of caring labor extends across oceans and involves multiple households and various intricate webs of relationship. Care chains are problematic for three reasons. First, immigrant care workers find themselves particularly vulnerable to manipulation and abuse at the hands of their wealthy employers: Generally, labor laws in most countries do not apply to workers in private households. Second, the consistent migration of female care workers from poorer to wealthier countries eventually damages the socio-emotional commons in these workers' home communities. Third, care chains maintain the global illusion that women have achieved genuine equality with men: Because the gendered division of labor persists in the private and public sphere along with the masculine career model, women generally still find themselves burdened with the second-shift of caring labor in their homes. In response, I propose the use of "caring contracts" to address these conflicts. First, the caring contract shows how care ethics's feminist priorities can work in conjunction with the liberally derived concept of contractual arrangements between seemingly distant parties. Second, caring contracts prohibit the abuse of immigrant care workers while motivating a global conversation regarding the patriarchal and masculinist norms that have encouraged women's reliance on care chains. Privileged men and women will have to reconsider the true value of care work and understand why all capable individuals should participate in its completion. This dialogue would have to include revising global economic polices that have forced women in developing countries to emigrate for employment opportunities. / Philosophy

This thesis explores globalization’s effects on female migrant domestic workers in Latin America by examining the socioeconomic and political status of Paraguayan and Peruvian domestic workers in Argentina. Through this research, I answer several key questions. First, how does globalization shape neoliberal markets that enforce the exploitative structures of domestic labor? Second, how is gender inequality present in governmental and social discrimination? Third, do the costs of transnational care labor outweigh the benefits? The former two questions are answered by the rising demand for care labor and resulting global care chains that fuel greater cross-border migration and statelessness of female migrants. Additionally, cultural and familial pressures magnify the sexual division of labor and maintain domestic labor’s low social status. Using a gender analysis, I address the last question by concluding that gender inequalities through governmental and social discrimination, plus emotional-familial burdens, outweigh domestic labor’s short-sighted financial prospects and autonomy provided by globalization.

Une épidémie généralisée de VIH/sida est attestée en Éthiopie dès le début des années 1990. Répartie de façon très hétérogène d’une région à l’autre du pays, l’épidémie est restée essentiellement concentrée dans les villes où le taux de séroprévalence est à son maximum parmi les jeunes femmes adultes. Diverses formes de privation économique et sociale se produisent au sein de la population urbaine et plus particulièrement parmi les femmes, en lien avec une mobilité géographique interne à dominante féminine et une instabilité conjugale très marquée. Facteur aggravant ces formes de privation économique et sociale, le VIH/sida a été à l’origine d’une mobilisation de malades socialement défavorisés qui se sont rassemblés autour de leurs afflictions afin de faire face à leur condition par la recherche de différentes formes d’aides et d’un soutien psycho-social auprès de différentes organisations non- gouvernementales et humanitaires. Cette mobilisation s’est par la suite amplifiée se structurant autour des stratégies globales de lutte contre l’épidémie en même temps que celle-ci a conduit à un investissement sans précédents dans le système sociosanitaire éthiopien en termes de ressources économiques, humaines, techniques et biomédicales. Les politiques d’accès gratuit et généralisé aux ARV que l’Éthiopie a mises en place grâce au développement de partenariats avec des organisations d’aide multilatérale, des pays engagés dans la coopération bilatérale, et des instances globales de la santé, se sont de fait progressivement inscrites à différents titres dans le champ de la lutte contre la pauvreté. Elles ont plus particulièrement facilité la prise en charge globale de femmes séropositives au sein de la population considérée pauvre sur la base de leur condition médicale alors que le ciblage de cette population est imparfaitement atteint par les politiques de réduction de la pauvreté. En s’appuyant sur les données recueillies au cours d’enquêtes ethnographiques réalisées en Éthiopie entre 2007 et 2010, cette thèse se propose plus précisément d’étudier l’impact que les politiques d’accès aux soins ont eu sur la représentation sociale de la pauvreté féminine en Éthiopie tant par le développement de diverses formes de solidarité parmi des citoyens les plus marginalisés que par la facilitation de leur accès à diverses ressources matérielles et symboliques. Se constituant comme un observatoire privilégié du processus historique d’évolution de l’État éthiopien sous l’angle de ses pratiques dans une situation de forte extraversion, la lutte contre le VIH/sida se donne plus spécialement à voir comme l’espace de nouvelles expériences de citoyenneté de la part de femmes malades socialement marginalisées en lien avec diverses formes de mobilités sociales engendrées par leur participation en tant qu’actrices profanes au fonctionnement des dispositifs sociosanitaires dévolus à l’endiguement de cette épidémie. / A widespread HIV/AIDS epidemic was confirmed in Ethiopia at the beginning of the 1990s. The epidemic is distributed very unevenly between one region of the country and another, but is essentially concentrated in the towns where the HIV prevalence rate is at its highest level among young adult women. Various forms of economic and social deprivation are observed among urban population and more particularly among women consistent with a predominantly female internal geographic mobility and very significant levels of marital instability. HIV/AIDS was an aggravating factor in these forms of economic and social privation marginality, and gave rise to a mobilization of socially underprivileged sick people who grouped together around their afflictions in order to confront their condition by seeking different forms of aid and psychosocial support from the various non-governmental and humanitarian organisations. This mobilisation then expanded, and was structured around global strategies for facing the epidemic, and at the same time led to unprecedented levels of investment in the Ethiopian healthcare system in terms of economic, human, technical and biomedical resources. The strategies for widespread free access to ARVs that were implemented in Ethiopia thanks to the development of partnerships with multilateral aid organizations, the countries involved in bilateral cooperation and global health organisations gradually became involved in different ways in the struggle against poverty. More particularly, they facilitated the global care of HIV positive women from the population that was deemed to be poor based on their medical condition, whereas targeting of this population is only imperfectly obtained through policies to reduce poverty. By the use of data gathered during the ethnographic studies carried out in Ethiopia between 2007 and 2010, the precise aim of this thesis is to study the impact that policies of access to care have had on the social representation of female poverty in Ethiopia through the development of a variety of forms of solidarity among the most marginalised citizens and their access to various material and symbolic resources. As a privileged observatory of the historical process of development of the Ethiopian State from the perspective of its practices in a highly extraversive situation, the struggle against HIV/AIDS results in a space for new citizenship experiences on the part of socially-marginalized HIV-positive women, in relation to the various forms of social mobility engendered by their participation as lay actors in the functioning of the social and health care devices dedicated to containing this epidemic.