Global care chains: a state‐of‐the‐art review and future directions in care transnationalization research

Abstract

This article provides a state‐of‐the‐art review and sympathetic critique of global care chain (GCC) analysis, focusing on its contributions to a sustained research agenda on care transnationalization. GCC analysis has opened up theoretical perspectives and discursive spaces for the sophisticated understandings of globalization processes. Rooted in global network methodology and cognizant of the grounded, textured and embodied nature of care transnationalization, GCC analysis has significantly contributed to better understandings of the socio‐spatial dimensions of diverse forms of care provision worldwide and the identification of transnational political and policy responses. This research agenda is far from exhausted and future research could productively address the following critiques and the conceptual and theoretical issues to which they give rise: first, that GCC research may reinforce care work as women's work; second, that it privileges some aspects of care transnationalization over others; and, third, that GCC analysis renaturalizes the nation‐state. The discussion outlines the implications of these issues for future directions in care transnationalization research.