International migration of domestic and care workers - ethnicity, gender and care

本研究项目旨在从理论和经验上进行分析，最重要的是，说明在家庭佣工/护理人员的国际移徙中，主要由女工从事的族裔、性别和护理工作相互交织的实际情况。本课题的基本问题是研究以下几个方面的实际情况：（1）输出国经济条件差，存在一些结构性问题（2）接收国的制度和对外国人和移民护理人员的应对。在本项目中，我们研究了斯里兰卡作为家庭/护理工人派遣国的案例。并且，我们研究了日本、美国、瑞典、新加坡、科威特和阿联酋作为接收国的案例。在这些情况下，日本和瑞典目前不是接收海外家庭佣工/护理人员的国家。然而，还有另一代人在日本从事第一代朝鲜人（“在日人”）的护理工作。瑞典一直在接受通过“家庭团聚”制度来到该国的政治难民和外国人。这些人中的一些人现在正在瑞典的公共护理服务中发挥重要作用。通过纳入这些案例，本研究项目从一个比以往任何时候都更新的角度审查了家庭佣工/护理人员的国际移徙问题;也就是说，它考虑了与福利制度有关的移徙问题，福利制度目前是高度工业化国家的政治经济制度，由政府、市场和家庭组成。这一观点表明，目前的福利制度，只被理解为在传统的框架“民族国家=国民经济”的制度，已经包括一些因素，如跨框架的多种族化，政治，经济和社会因素。

This research project aims to analyze theoretically and empirically, and, most importantly, to illustrate the actual conditions of the intersection of ethnicity, gender and care work that is largely occupied by female labourers in the international migration of domestic/care workers. The basic issues of our project are to research the actual situation of : (1)poor economic conditions of sending countries and some structural problems (North-South problem and continuation of poverty) which causes to push out domestic/care workers to foreign countries, and (2)the system and response to foreign and immigrant care workers in receiving countries.In this project, we researched Sri Lanka as a case of a sending country of domestic/care workers. And, we researched Japan, the USA, Sweden, Singapore, Kuwait and the UAE as cases of receiving countries. In those cases, Japan and Sweden are not currently receiving countries of domestic/care workers from overseas. However, there is another generation who engage in care work for the first generation of resident ("Zainichi") Koreans in Japan. Sweden has been accepting political refugees and foreigners who came to the country through "family unification" system. A number of these people are now taking on an important part of the public care service in Sweden. By including these cases, this research project examines international migration of domestic/care workers from a newer perspective than ever ; that is to say, it considers the migration in relation to the welfare regime that is currently the political economy regime in highly industrial countries and is consisted by government, market and family. This perspective indicates that the present welfare regime that is understood only in the traditional framework of "nation-state = national economy" is the system which already includes some elements crossing over the framework such as multi-racialisation, and political, economic and social elements.