Migration disrupts, fractures, and re-shapes migrants’ social infrastructures, requiring migrants to make new connections, re-build communities, and nurture new relationships. This introductory chapter opens with two short vignettes to demonstrate the concept of “communities of care” as it has been conceptualized in the work of volume editors, Valerie Francisco-Menchavez (The labor of care: Filipina migrants and transnational families in the digital age. University of Illinois Press, 2018) and Leah Williams Veazey (Migrant mothers in the digital age: Emotion and belonging in migrant maternal online communities. Routledge, 2021). After these illustrative anecdotes, this chapter provides definitional discussions of the key concepts and frameworks in which the volume is grounded, and explanations of the structures and processes of migration that engender these innovative practices of migrant solidarity and resilience. Migrants’ communities of care are often brought about by conditions of dispossession, displacement, and violence. This introductory chapter explains how these structural constraints, including gendered migration patterns (Kofman & Raghuram, Gendered migrations and global social reproduction. Springerm 2015), racialized labor, global patterns of power (Raghuram, Chapter 4: Race and feminist care ethics: intersectionality as method. In The changing ethos of human rights. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021), transnational family separation (Francisco-Menchavez, All in the family: Transnational families and stepwise migration strategies. Geographical Research, 58, 377–387, 2020; Merla et al. Introduction to the special issue “Transnational care: Families confronting borders”. Journal of Family Research, 32(3), 393–414, 2020), and inequitable access to services and welfare, provide a clear basis for points of unity, fostering relationships of solidarity and political organizing (Tungohan, Care activism: migrant domestic workers, movement-building, and communities of care. University of Illinois Press, 2023). Situating the organizing concept of “communities of care” in the extant migration and care literature, the editors introduce the other key concepts around which the collection is organized, e.g. horizontal care, relational mobility, relational settlement, and an intersectional ethics of care (Raghuram, Chapter 4: Race and feminist care ethics: intersectionality as method. In The changing ethos of human rights. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021). We ground this work in the scholarship of feminists of color (Collins, Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment – 30thAnniversary Edition. Routledge, 1990/2022), in which care work is expanded beyond the narrow confines of a biologically determined family formation, and beyond formal, paid care work, and is to be found (instead or as well) in networks of peers, friends, and allies. Anchoring this work in these theoretical frames allows us to capture a capacious definition of care work, care networks and care arrangements, as deployed by the authors in the volume. Our expansive view of “communities of care” makes space for a range of affective and emotional relationships among migrants and for the problematic and exclusionary practices that materialize. Tracing the intellectual foundations on which these concepts are built, the editors provide both a theoretical scaffolding for the subsequent chapters and a groundwork for future research in this area. Lastly, the introduction highlights the interconnections across the chapters included in the volume, drawing out the themes, convergences and departures explored by the diverse authors in varied research contexts.

Introduction

章节
发表日期：

2025年

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Valerie Francisco-Menchavez,
Leah Williams Veazey

摘要

Migration disrupts, fractures, and re-shapes migrants’ social infrastructures, requiring migrants to make new connections, re-build communities, and nurture new relationships. This introductory chapter opens with two short vignettes to demonstrate the concept of “communities of care” as it has been conceptualized in the work of volume editors, Valerie Francisco-Menchavez (The labor of care: Filipina migrants and transnational families in the digital age. University of Illinois Press, 2018) and Leah Williams Veazey (Migrant mothers in the digital age: Emotion and belonging in migrant maternal online communities. Routledge, 2021). After these illustrative anecdotes, this chapter provides definitional discussions of the key concepts and frameworks in which the volume is grounded, and explanations of the structures and processes of migration that engender these innovative practices of migrant solidarity and resilience. Migrants’ communities of care are often brought about by conditions of dispossession, displacement, and violence. This introductory chapter explains how these structural constraints, including gendered migration patterns (Kofman & Raghuram, Gendered migrations and global social reproduction. Springerm 2015), racialized labor, global patterns of power (Raghuram, Chapter 4: Race and feminist care ethics: intersectionality as method. In The changing ethos of human rights. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021), transnational family separation (Francisco-Menchavez, All in the family: Transnational families and stepwise migration strategies. Geographical Research, 58, 377–387, 2020; Merla et al. Introduction to the special issue “Transnational care: Families confronting borders”. Journal of Family Research, 32(3), 393–414, 2020), and inequitable access to services and welfare, provide a clear basis for points of unity, fostering relationships of solidarity and political organizing (Tungohan, Care activism: migrant domestic workers, movement-building, and communities of care. University of Illinois Press, 2023). Situating the organizing concept of “communities of care” in the extant migration and care literature, the editors introduce the other key concepts around which the collection is organized, e.g. horizontal care, relational mobility, relational settlement, and an intersectional ethics of care (Raghuram, Chapter 4: Race and feminist care ethics: intersectionality as method. In The changing ethos of human rights. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021). We ground this work in the scholarship of feminists of color (Collins, Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment – 30thAnniversary Edition. Routledge, 1990/2022), in which care work is expanded beyond the narrow confines of a biologically determined family formation, and beyond formal, paid care work, and is to be found (instead or as well) in networks of peers, friends, and allies. Anchoring this work in these theoretical frames allows us to capture a capacious definition of care work, care networks and care arrangements, as deployed by the authors in the volume. Our expansive view of “communities of care” makes space for a range of affective and emotional relationships among migrants and for the problematic and exclusionary practices that materialize. Tracing the intellectual foundations on which these concepts are built, the editors provide both a theoretical scaffolding for the subsequent chapters and a groundwork for future research in this area. Lastly, the introduction highlights the interconnections across the chapters included in the volume, drawing out the themes, convergences and departures explored by the diverse authors in varied research contexts.