BRUNG SKIN GYAL STAY HOAM AND MINE BABY: GENDERED EXPECTATIONS AND TRANSNATIONAL CARING AMONG BELIZEAN MIGRANT WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

Abstract

This study employs a multi-sited ethnographic approach involving forty-eight participants to examine the complex dynamics of migration, the commodification of care, and transnational social reproduction through the experiences of Belizean migrant women in the United States and their care networks in Belize.

Grounded in Social Reproduction Theory and Feminist Political Economy, the study focuses on care workers and care practices across transnational social fields. I argue that Belizean migrant women address care needs and influence caregiving practices across multiple domains: the employer’s household, their own households, extended families and their communities both ‘here’ and ‘there’. In so doing, they reconfigure traditional gender roles, household economies, and the social organization of care.

Drawing on concepts such as care circulation and economic motherhood, the study explores how caregiving obligations are negotiated within kin-based systems of reciprocity. These culturally embedded practices, offer women relative autonomy that facilitates mobility and entry into labor markets, while simultaneously sustaining multigenerational care networks.

Findings indicate that Belizean women’s entry into the global care market as domiciliary care workers, particularly in roles involving childcare, eldercare, and care for the infirm, was shaped by the demand for racialized, migrant women. This labor, though commodified, closely mirrors the unpaid care work they performed in Belize and is often framed as a moral responsibility.

The convergence of market, state, and domestic spheres significantly shapes Belizean migrant women’s transnational experiences, producing layered structural inequalities through global capitalist demands, racialized labor hierarchies and measures such as restrictive migration policies in the United States. Yet, despite these constraints, these Belizean women continue to contribute to family maintenance, extended kin support, and community-based provisioning care, effectively relieving the state of many responsibilities tied to social reproduction. They draw on moral economies rooted in colonial gendered divisions of labor, as well as cultural notions such as “time longer than rope”, and values likes broughtupsy to build reputational capital and secure work in a precarious labor market.

Despite their significant contributions, Belizean caregivers remain undervalued due to entrenched gendered and racialized assumptions. This research advocates a revaluation of care work and stronger policy recognition of caregivers’ contributions, to ensure greater social protection throughout their working lives and into old age.