Invisible Hands, Global Burdens: The Gendered Cost of Migration and Care Work

Arecent New Yorker cover, “A Mother’s Work: A Glimpse into the Lives of New York’s Caretakers,” sparked heated discussion on social media for its striking portrayal of migrant women’s realities. The image depicts two women of color caring for white children on a playground. One woman, cradling a baby, shows her colleague a photo of a young graduate on her phone, likely her own child, celebrating a milestone she could not witness. This poignant illustration lays bare the invisible labor at the heart of the global care economy. In these care chains, women from low-income countries leave their families behind to provide care and comfort to wealthier households, while their own children are often raised by relatives or hired caregivers back home. Behind every remittance sent across borders lies the sacrifices these women make, which keep families both near and far afloat. While gendered labor has been structured around care of the upper-class family structure since chattel slavery and colonialism, in the postindustrial era and subsequent capitalist boom of society, the decline in publicly funded social services and the privatization of care have reshaped household responsibilities, shifting caregiving from a public good to a market-driven service. While second-wave feminism in the 1960s fought for women’s rights in the workplace, such as the right to equal pay, mainstream feminism often centered the struggles of middle-class white women—those discouraged from working outside the