Executive Summary:
Global Heart Transplant: The Commodification of Love in the Global
Economy
The new global economy has offered countries of the North an amazing quantity
of wealth and an opulent quality of life. However, for those in the Southern developing countries this life can only be a
dream. As many developing nations accept restructuring loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), they
have been forced to slash social services, which provide health care, food, shelter and clean water to their populations.
Because many of the countries in which this ‘restructuring’ takes place, where patriarchic system of male domination
may be the social norm, women who are mothers and home keepers are often the hardest hit by these service cuts, forced to
make choices that affect the lives of their children.
Because the restructuring loans come with very high interest rates, many of the
countries that accept them do not have the resources to export goods deemed valuable to the North, they begin exporting their
manpower. Due to the low education level of many of the people of these countries, often women are recruited into the domestic
service industry in wealthy nations, caring for homes, children, and the elderly. When women leave their homes, they also
may leave behind their children and husbands to be cared for by family in order to earn money to send home. The reasons these
women leave are many, and the toll this global heart transplant takes on those who leave and those left behind is substantial.
1.Matthew Yearsley
2.What are the effects of women and children within the context of labor migration in the domestic
care application?
3. I am interested in how globalization affects the care environment within the context of feminist
theory.
4. Research Databases:
-ProQuest
-Lexis Nexis
Outside Sources:
-UW interlibrary loan and Seattle Campus stacks at Odegaard and Susalo Libraries.
5. Major findings:
-Women are the primary migrants from the global south to north.
-Though many migrating women are actively encouraged by their governments (see Sri Lanka, Philippines)
to migrate as their remittances provide a boon to the local economies, the women are socially ostracised on numerous levels
for abandoning social norms for the betterment of their families.
-Horrific emotional and physical abuses take place for many women working abroad in domestic aide
applications.
-Many migrant domestics are raped at alarming levels. When they attempt to speak out against
their attackers, they risk deportation and a myriad of other abuses by the governments that they are working in. These
inatances are extremely prevalent in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
-Many of these workers are working legally within the bounds of the host countries, and still recieve
no Union protection or governmental support.
6. I've come to understand the huge volume of support from southern countries that we in the
developed world simply do not see. Unfortunately, these migrant women are seen as expendable, and are treated in horrific
ways by their host country.
