Transnational Care Plots: “Wrestling with the Angels,” Theory and Metaphors on Care and Migration
No. 43 (2021-04-01)Author(s)
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Camila Esguerra MuelleGrupo Interdisciplinario de Estudios de Género (GIEG), Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Abstract
In this article, I further explore the theoretical proposal of what I call transnational care plots. I do so based on an approximately decade-long research agenda on migration and care, using over a hundred stories and nearly fifty body mappings derived from a multi-sited and collaborative ethnography conducted in Colombia and Spain (Cali, Medellin, Cartagena, Bogota, Barcelona, and Madrid). I draw on the notion of global care chains, as coined by Arlie Hochschild, to provide a metaphor that leads to a more fluid and acute mental picture of the number and complexity of the intertwining trajectories of those who migrate and care in a world that does not yet give fair recognition to the implications of the transnationalized care regime on life in general, and on the lives of migrants in particular. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s dissertations on the usefulness of metaphors in the domain of theorizing — what he calls “wrestling with angels” — and on narratives constructed from multisite ethnography and a reflexive approach, I develop the image of transnational care plots as a metaphor with discursive, somatic, political, aesthetic and affective dimensions. Little has been written about Colombia’s place in these chains or plots, despite the fact that it is one of the central countries in the operation of the transnationalized care regime. At the same time, I develop a complexification of the so far little explored notion of global care chains, which is essential to envisioning and shaping the narratives of migrant care workers and to understand the politics of dispossession involved there. This, in turn allows us to imagine possible futures that go against the tide and which “wrestle with the angels.”
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