Policy Gaps and Theory Gaps: Women And Migrant Domestic Labor

This contribution brings a feminist intersectionalities approach to bear on the so-called policy gap -- when governments act in ways that undermine their own stated goals -- with respect especially to immigration, but also to labor and family policy. Analyzing the increasingly large worldwide flows of women to do paid domestic work, the authors argue that policy gaps in receiving countries both feed on and are fed by inequalities of gender, race, class, and nationality, in ways that appear to pit some groups of women against others, but that ultimately disadvantage everyone. This study provides a feminist critique of the mainstream human capital theory explanation of migration, identifies several gaps within current feminist theory, and proposes some improved approaches.