"National heroes" or 'transnational shames'? Exploring the development-migration nexus in migrant domestic workers and ICT workers

Abstract

"Information and communication technologies (ICT) and domestic work are the two sectors that Germany has recently lifted its general recruitment ban. The recruitment of migrant women and men, either as a domestic or an ICT worker, provides solutions to the alleged 'deficit' in care and in the knowledge economy. In addition, they send remittances back home. Despite these commonalities the existing literature tends to treat these two groups of migrants as separate subjects of research, resulting in 'paradigmatic separation'. I attempt to overcome this separation by juxtaposing these two flows. I analyze the media and political discourses about them focusing on India and Poland, the major sending countries of the respective migratory streams to Germany. I argue that the mode of incorporation of the two flows into development is far from unitary. I unpack that the discursive constructions rest on their alleged skill levels, which are highly gendered and classed. Whereas the Polish state strategically commodifies its female citizens' reproductive labour on the transnational labour market, India selectively draws on the national identification among (former) Indian migrant citizens in the highly skilled and skilled sectors for the transnational circulation of knowledge and resources. However, these migrant heroes of development are subject to moral disciplining of a transnational shame or blame." (author's abstract)