Gladis Aguirre

---

Mobilising care

This thesis focuses on the dynamics of care in the transnational lives of Ecuadorian migrant women in Spain. It is concerned with the variousnforms of care that take shape and are sustained in the workplace, between friends, and among family members in Ecuador and Spain. Ultimately, it sheds light on how care is mobilised to sustain ideals of solidarity at work as well as togetherness in transnational life. Themthesis is set against the background of the economic and political crisis in Ecuador of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which resulted in a wave of female migration to Western Europe, especially Spain. Women left their children, spouses and elderly parents behind to work in domestic and care jobs abroad. In light of this, the thesis engages with women’s dilemmas in giving and receiving care during years of absence, the role of family members, friends and domestic workers in this process, and the development of long-term goals focused on remittances, reunification, return, and the ultimate goal of creating a better future. Most generally, while challenging a series of dichotomies between love and money, home and work, gift and commodity, the thesis describes the intimate relationship between women’s participation in the gift economy and a global labour market through the lens of care relationships. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology N.S. 22 This is a Doctoral Thesis in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, Sweden 2019