å Sunday, November 12th, 2017

The commons was originally a term used in the 15th century in relation to land that was used for livestock to graze. This land was intended for shared use for everyone. The commons can also take on a different meaning that takes the form of a community rather than land. Within this community, people are expected to work together and provide services for each other. In the 15th century land became privatized so people weren’t able to share land they way they used to. Land became restricted, and the same thing happened to communities through migration. The way people can work for and with each other changed. The meaning of this concept in relation to the concerns discussed by the authors, is that there is a strong need of the commons within third world countries. Able bodied adults are heavily needed to provide their services as caretakers to the elderly and children, or as nurses and teachers, but this is also the same population of people who are leaving their countries to go to other first world nations in order to do work for a higher pay so they can financially support their family. We require this concept of the commons in order to understand how complex issues related to migration are, and how the efforts to provide a better life can lead to other problems especially for children. The idea of the commons could be applied to land use, family dynamics and community dynamics so it, along with financial gain, is necessary to understand in order to see how it impacts everyone like the children for example. The children who didn’t have their mother around them didn’t do as well in school, and experienced feelings of sadness that impacted their lives in many ways. Because women weren’t able to physically care for their children their love became commodified. Gifts and money were exchanged for taking care of someone’s child. The psycho-social growth of children became a great concern because of migrating mothers.

In order to understand the migration between the South and North we have to focus on the concept of “the commons”. Arlie Hochschild, Lise Widding Isaksen, and Sambasivan Uma Devi discuss the concepts affected by migration which are care chains, commons and the problem of capital. In “Global Care Crisis: A Problem of Capital, Care Chain, or Commons” the authors mainly talk about the migration of mothers from Southern countries to the United States. The authors discuss the concept of care chain which basically means that the older daughter from a poor family helps to take care of her siblings in order for her mother to work as a nanny caring for the children whose mothers migrated to take care of the children of rich family.  The care chain can have a positive and negative effect on the family, yes the child life is improve because of the remittances send to them but not growing up with a stable, union family can effect the children. The communities that the families belong to are refer to as the common in this article. In the care chain everyone depends on one another for support in order to survive. In order to make enough money to support their family, these mothers migrated to the United States where they made five times more money than what they would of made in their native country. In many cases migrant mothers would leave their children with family members or even their eldest child in order to be able to move. Once they arrived in the United States they found jobs working as nurses, housekeepers, and caregivers. Many people viewed migrant mothers as selfish, materialistic and bad moms because of the long time they spend separated from their children, when in reality the reason they’re separated from their children was in order to help provide for them.  The money these mother sent back to their native countries, allows the opportunity to improve the lives of the the children that were left behind.  The money sent back to these countries in forms of remittances also help to contribute to the nation economic development.

In the reading “Global Care Crisis: A Problem of Capital, Care Chains, or Commons?” by Arlie Hochschild, Lise Widding Isaksen, and Sambasivan Uma Devi, they mention the term commons. The term commons was first referred to the land of the fifteenth century English villagers where they could freely graze their sheep and cattle, collect firewood, and hunt game. The British then took the land and didn’t let the commoners use it. The word commons could also mean the community of families that people belonged to within the care chain. The purpose of migration was to seek for better paying jobs. The mothers would be more likely to migrate away from their own families including their young children is all due to higher paying jobs. You would think that the commons that are left in their home lands would be against migration but they actually benefited from it. The mothers would send back home  remittances. The third world government capitalized from it as well because they were able to tax  hard currency remittances. Even though the mothers were providing for their children they did face a huge social cost which was shame. Talking about how the mother’s children were doing was a taboo topic, they were sensitive and considered it a private matter. Alexandro Portes defines social capital as the accumulation of “social chits”. In the exchange of social chits, they leave open the time for repayment. Between migrant mother and caring-giving kin, there is an exchange of social chits. This right here would be considered the term care chains. While the mother is off working, either her older daughter, her sister, or any sort of kin would look after her younger children. Even with the conflict of not being there for their children, most migrants saw themselves as using their remittances to better their families, which are the commons.

The article explores a less exposed aspect of analyzing a snapshot of today’s global economy and how existing and highly developed capitalistic societies affect other societies that have not been privatized to an extreme degree. The authors quickly establish the concept of global migration and how it is not so deeply explored beyond the conditions of the work itself and the material exchange gain of the workers and employers (the hiring class of these first world countries) (Devi, 2008:406). They, instead, focus on the social effect it has on the families of migrant workers who seek service work.

Through a numerous set of examples, the authors effectively illustrate the demand for domestic labor in first world countries and the ability for mothers in third world countries to fulfill it. The first negative effect is that the country that exports this labor may actually be in need of these laborers. Some countries may not, however. The commonality between these types of economy is the stress pushed onto families.

The authors define the commons as being anything that is shared in a community, a place where favors are exchanged, and where families and communities can gather and share their company. This does not exist to the degree it once use to in the capitalistic north countries as they do in the south countries. Mothers will migrate to these countries to secure a job in this privatized market. What they leave behind are children that will then need to be cared for by other family members, or friends. This will put stress on the children as it will for the mothers since it forces them to rationalize these broken relationships, with an implication that there is little to no guidance by the authors.

The importance of this issue is expressed as a necessary component of properly analyzing the effect of countries as a whole. This loss of the commons cause by the empty space left behind by an absent mother can have cultural wide negative effects. The siphoning of migrant mothers from their commons-culture societies to satisfy a capitalist society’s’ labor demands can have lasting effects as the effected children may grow up emotionally and physiologically damaged

Alfie Corteza

Professor Bullock

Assignment #10

In “Global Care Crisis: A Problem of Capital, Care Chains, or Commons?” by Arlie Hochschild, Lise Widding Isaksen, and Sambasivan Uma Devi, a commons is a practice originating from the 15th century that allowed villagers to acquire resources from the shared land, a somewhat give and take principle. However, the 21st-century version of the commons is the migration of third world countries making tertiary sector jobs of being nannies, nurses, and other servitude different kind of occupations. Women from third world countries from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Kerala, and Ukraine are deprived of mothers as they migrate to Western European countries and The United States as the pay there are substantially better compared to the educated occupations within their own country. As much as this sounds beneficial on all fronts, the demand is fulfilled, and the supplies being paid well an issue arises with the family left behind. The problem is that the mothers working abroad are there for many months even years to send back money as remittances, at the cost of not seeing their children and family. As a result, the children and also infants in the hands of other family members or even neighbors grow a detachment and resentment to their absent mothers as the children consider them selfish and unkindly.There was evidence shown that the father left behind would not take proper care of the child, and would result with other female relatives to take care of them. If the father were to go, and the mother to stay behind the mother would have to take both parental roles as mother and father. It also affects the child’s education as it was revealed that the children missing one or both of their children performed worse than their counterparts whose parents are consistently present in their lives. These children also hold a resentment as they question the absent parent’s love for them. Hothschild, Isaksen, and Devi piece “Global Care Crisis” points out the issues of expatriate workers on their own lives, and those that they leave behind in their mother country.

In “Global Care Crisis: A Problem of Capital, Care Chains, or Commons?” Arlie Hochschild, Lise Widding Isaksen, and Sambasivan Uma Davi talk about the various concepts surrounding migration, including some of its hidden aspects. First, they mention that the number of female migrants is increasing compared to male migrants, most of them being young mothers of multiple children. This influences places where the female population is migrating out to the North to look for jobs, causing a decrease in the working population in the South. The women who choose to migrate must leave her family, which has several consequences. The mothers must leave behind their children in the care of her husband, grandparents, relatives, and sometimes neighbors. This impacts the child in such that they must grow up without the special love and connection that only mothers can provide. They may be more economically stable than their peers but will feel left out and envious of those who live with their mothers. Moreover, they can start doubting whether their parents really love them or not, and wonder whether the money and gifts they are receiving from their migrant mothers really represent love or just commitment. In such ways, children are very much affected by having to live apart from their migrant mothers. In the case of the mother herself, the act of leaving her place in a community deprives her family and the community of the caring and emotional relational exchanges that would have occurred had she not left. There is the challenge of weighing the benefit of the monetary stability and sustaining important relationships. “The Commons” represents a community that is bonded through the exchange of favors and the resulting growth in trust and dependence of one another. This is a healthy social development that is being disrupted through the increase in female migration, because it keeps the mothers away from being involved with the family and community, at least to the degree that would have occurred had she not left to earn money. Such are the hidden costs of being mothers who migrate to support and raise up her family.

In the article “Global Care Crisis” by Arlie Hochschild, Lise Widding Isaksen, and Sambasivan Uma Devi, they discuss the extents that women go, to provide for their families. The discussion of how mothers migrate from foreign countries such as the Philippines, to America, in search of jobs, is prevalent in the discussion of the “commons.” The “commons” can generally referred to as resources held in a community, and what the person gives and receives from that community. These mothers who often leave many children back in their own country, face a difficult decision of whether or not to leave to a foreign country to look for work. Many mothers feel proud of working overseas, but feel terrible about leaving their children without a mother. Mothers often face a backlash, being accused of being a bad mother and selfish for leaving their kids without a mother. Mothers from foreign countries often become caretakers, nannies, nurses, and housekeepers. This is considered a global chain because they leave their children to go take care of other children. The children that are left without a mother to care for them affects the system of the commons. The community of children are left with this hole in their life without a mother. In the commons, where communities are very close and rely on each other, often fall apart due to the large amount of children without mothers. A potential solution to this problem is allowing these children to join their mothers in the journey for work. It would allow for a better relationship along with being able to care for your own children. Although, it creates imbalance in society, when there are so many children left to fend for themselves in a foreign country. It could also cause mothers to potentially lose money if they were to bring their children with them. The cost of caring for children is vastly high, nowadays, and it creates another imbalance because even if mothers are making more than they did before, they will still struggle caring for their children at a low paying job. This is a problem that will require research and a lot of potential solutions.

Being an outsider is something that one experiences at one point in their life. It makes you feel isolated and it often makes you feel a variety of emotions. This moment in my life when I felt like an outsider was in middle school. As a non-catholic going to a catholic school, it was very awkward when teachers used to talk about religion and as a class when we went to church. In middle school, we used to have a religion class twice a week and it was odd to see classmates participate in discussion about God and share their own personal views. I didn’t feel very comfortable sharing my views on God, because I thought it would offend my classmates. We also used to go to church as a class and I dreaded that because the students would have to kneel on the stand and pray, while I just sat and watched along with a couple of other classmates. At the end of the mass, the students would go up and receive bread along with drinking wine. Again, I would watch the students and it was very uncomfortable because of the non-participation in these religious activities. Although, I do not regret going to this school, I felt like an outsider any time religion came up in discussion. In Patricia Hill Collins piece, she explored how being an outsider made black women learn about oppression and inequality. She mentions black women being mules, the white women were dogs, and white males would never treat them as humans. Collins mentions how these outsider experiences allows these women to go through the pain of struggling to fit in, but also allows them to overcome adversity. Black women naturally have this bond with each other because of their ability to share past experiences of being an outsider. It is important to stick together as people and treat each other as equals.

There have been a few times in my life when I felt like an outsider. Fortunately it has not happened a lot, but when it does happen it can be extremely hard. I’ve had a learning disability my entire life and I have struggled with it for as long as I can remember. Growing up, for all my exams and quizzes from as early as elementary school, I had to leave the classroom and take it in a special location. I used to be so embarrassed by this because I just wanted to take the exam in my classroom with all my other peers. Having a disability has made me feel like an outsider and made me feel down about myself. It had me questioning myself, that I was not as smart as my friends because I would take me extra time to just finish one assignment. As I have grown older, and became more mature, I have accepted my learning disability because it made me who I am. Instead of being embarrassed by this, I learned to embrace it and not be ashamed of who I am. Correlating my feelings with Paticia Hill-Collin’s essay, “Learning from the Outsider Within” she talks about all different kinds of stereotypes and labels that people have and even give themselves. She discussed families within her essay who comes from all different types of backgrounds.  All of these families she talked about came from different backgrounds, yet they all had a time where they experienced what it felt like to be an outsiders.  Many people think that there is a certain path we as people are suppose to follow. Sometimes, thing’s do not always go as they are suppose too. Social media is a huge influence on our society today. People have this idea in there head on what they are suppose to look like because of the media. 99% of the people do not look like anything compared to what is shown on TV and magazines. This causes people to feel down about themselves and make them feel like an outsider because they believe they are not socially accepted.

Arlie Hochschild, Lise Widding Isaksen, and Sambasivan Uma Devi discuss “the commons” of migration and its connections to financial and social capitals, and to children’s relational world in “Global Care Crisis: A Problem of Capital, Care Chains, or Commons?”. The article talks about how mothers from southern countries (South America, Northern Africa, etc) will leave their children in the care of others to migrate to more economically stable northern countries (North America, South Europe, etc.) to care for children not of their own. In doing so, these migrants are able to make much more money that they can send back home to cover a series of expenses they otherwise would struggle to pay. Theses global care chains move social capital from these southern countries to the north and takes financial capital and sends it to the south. I think the authors’ concerns surrounding the concept of “the commons” is that these migrant workers look at their migration as a private struggle. Yet, these migrants are a part of a socio-emotional common community; if they don’t recognize this common between one another, discussions about this migration as a public issue will cease to exist. Another issue the authors find is that people look at these migrants and only see the advantages of the situation. Yet there are costs these women pay for being migrants. Many constantly worry about the care of their own children and feel a sense of shame in being viewed as “bad mothers” for leaving their children. Other costs pertain to these migrant children’s relational world, which is filled with feelings of doubt, sadness, and envy. I think the authors wish to reframe the mindset that these migrants are only gaining from this situation, that there are large social repercussions these migrants face; and the sooner we view these migrants as a common community, we can open more discussions concerning such.