Paper short abstract:

This presentation responds to the question of who care for the caregiver, and places the topic of family relationships in the global context where flexibility is currently the mode of organizing finances and labour markets, and consequently, intimate family life.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation analyses how Ecuadorian women living in Barcelona and their children and relatives in Ecuador organize caring relationships in order to respond to the constraints and opportunities of the global economy. How emotions become intricate with money when people adjust their lives to care for others are discussed here through ethnographic information provided by migrants and their relatives. Exploring care as a series of mutual attentiveness helps to better describe the multiple exchanges of men and women in different age who participate in webs of obligations that otherwise should be done by the migrant woman or covered by a public system of care. My argument is that women most than men still involve themselves in pooling resources for reproducing the family in the absence of a woman who migrates. However, this system of reciprocities, attentiveness and help always depends on the availability of unemployed, poorer family members or empleadas (domestic worker) who can offer care at the lowest price. As Beck and Beck-Gernsheim state: "It is not only corporations that need cheap labour, but also families do" (Conference LSE, February 2011). This analysis places the topic of family relationships in the global context where flexibility is currently the mode of organizing finances and labour markets, and consequently, intimate family life.