In the context of the WIDE+ series: “COVID19 and care: feminist reflections on a new normal”, this online webinar reflects on the underlying structural crisis of social reproduction and the structural problems of global care chains and migrant care work.
Global care chains are based on gender, class/caste, ethnic/racial and North/South inequalities and provide a kind of spatial fix of the crisis. Transnational care chains withdraw care capacities and emotional work from the Global South and shift care energy from poorer to more affluent households, from poor to richer countries. Migrant care workers are in a precarious position with regard to labour relations and rights, and in a dilemma of providing care and emotions to their employer or patient and their own transnational family at the same time. The Corona pandemic has deepened this dilemma, has depleted care energies and torn apart the care workers.
Webinar Registration
3 March, 5.00-6.30 PM CET, 2021, available in English and Spanish
Haga clic aquí para ver el anuncio en español
Speakers:
- Helma Lutz will shed light on the impact of pandemic on the live-in care workers and the COVID related transnational policies employed for such workers.
Helma Lutz has been trained as a sociologist and an educationalist. As a researcher she worked at the Centre for Race and Ethnic Studies, University of Amsterdam and later at the European Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations(ERCOMER), University of Utrecht. She is a professor of women’s and gender studies at the Department of Social Sciences at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany and has been acting director of this university’s Cornelia Goethe Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies since 2015. Her teaching and her research interests are concerned with gender, (transnational) migration, ethnicity, nationalism, racism and citizenship. She has a long record of research concerned with the intersection of gender, migration, ethnicity and nationality in European societies, has widely published on these issues in three languages (Dutch, German, English) and her work has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Polish and French. Her publications include 7 monographs, 14 (co-) edited books, 10 edited special journal issues and more than a hundred articles in national and international journals and edited collections: http://www.fb03.uni-frankfurt.de/44676468/Prof__Dr__Helma_Lutz
- Silvia Dumitrache will discuss the ‘Italian Syndrome’ with respect to Romanian care workers in Italy, along with the care gap created in Romania.
Silvia works in the social, cross-cultural and communication fields. A Romanian native, living in Italy since 2003, Ms. Dumitrache is the founder and president of the Romanian Women’s Association in Italy – ADRI, voluntarily coordinates a transnational project in support of migrant families, is constantly involved in social solidarity, networking, facilitation, and advocacy activities for assuming responsibility to safeguard the rights of children, women and the migratory family. Ms. Dumitrache is a member of the Romanian Women’s Lobby, of the Romanian Independent Working Group against Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling and a founder member of the Association Città Mondo in Milan. Silvia collaborated with the Presidential Administration and the Ministry for Romanians Abroad contributing to the formation of the first interinstitutional working group on the Romanian Children Left Behind to harmonize statistics on this issue, for drafting political policies and law amendments to help these children and their families abroad. Ms. Dumitrache is a journalist, AskroTV show producer and she also worked with the Romanian National Television and the Italian RAI. For her contribution in support of the children left behind and the transnational families, Silvia was nominated and awarded in 2012 as one of the 10 Exceptional Women of Romania.
- Catherine Abon will speak about the problems Filipina nurses and domestic workers face in different European countries and about the recruitment strategies by the German state on the Philippines.
Being a scientist, teacher, and activist, she is based in Germany since 2011 and continues her political work focusing on womens’ and migrants’ rights. She is a member of the progressive Filipino womens’ organization Gabriela Germany, and of the Interim Council of the Europe-wide April 28 Coalition [for Migrants’ and Refugees’ Rights and Welfare].