Disasters, care crises, and deepening inequalities clearly demonstrate that care is not merely a private matter, but a fundamental infrastructure that sustains social life. Feminist approaches expose the invisible burdens of care, especially in disasters; however, these interventions often fail to discuss their own “care costs.” Many efforts conducted in the name of care justice rely on field workers—predominantly women—suspending their own care networks and pushing their physical and emotional capacities to the limit. Thus, care does not disappear; it merely becomes invisible and is transferred to other bodies. Inspired by the concept of global care chains, I call this the Shadow Care Chain.
1. Global Care Chains: How Does Care Relocate?
The concept of “global care chains” describes how care is sustained by being transferred from one place to another. This concept was developed primarily by Arlie Russell Hochschild and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas through the lens of migration and care labor. The core idea is simple: when one person’s care burden decreases, that burden is often shifted into another person’s life. Care does not vanish.
The classic example is usually told as follows: A Filipino woman works in the US to care for a family’s child or elderly relative. She leaves her own child in the Philippines, often in the care of another woman who provides lower-paid or unpaid care labor. That woman, in turn, delegates her own care responsibilities to a relative or a younger woman. Thus, care is not “resolved” in one place; it turns into an elongated chain, changing hands between countries and women. Care becomes invisible, but it is also distributed unequally among women.
The true significance of this concept lies here: Who can provide care and who can transfer “the burden” of care is determined by power relations. This framework allows us to see how care circulates not only between households but also within projects, institutions, and interventions. Understanding what happens in disasters and civil society must begin from this point.
2. Shadow Care Chains in the Civil Sphere
In disasters, feminist approaches play a vital role in making visible whose shoulders the responsibility and labor of care fall upon. Thanks to these perspectives, women’s increased domestic labor, care responsibilities, and security and health needs after a disaster become part of the conversation. However, at this very point, another blind spot emerges: the care conditions of those performing this work in the field.
Feminist activists and civil society workers in disaster zones often suspend their own care networks to “reduce the care responsibilities of others.” Children, the elderly, and pets left at home; postponed health needs; and the dismissal of menstruation, grief, and burnout are all part of this process. These sacrifices are often viewed as individual choices, but they are, in fact, structurally expected. Project designs, budgets, and schedules do not make room for these care costs.
Consequently, a shadow care chain is established. While the care responsibilities of a woman in the disaster zone are lightened, this labor is shifted into the life of another woman working in the field. Care still circulates among women; it only changes address. Unless this transfer is named, the claim of care justice falters. Just as ‘sacrifice’ in the realm of care is expected from mothers, an individual ‘sacrifice’ is expected from humanitarian workers.
This invisibility leads to other consequences in the field. The figure of the humanitarian worker is increasingly “heroized”: strong, resilient, tireless, and enduring all conditions. This narrative portrays the need for care as a weakness. Setting boundaries, resting, and asking for support lose their legitimacy. As a result, the humanitarian field becomes “masculinized,” and power relations harden. It is no coincidence that boundary violations and cases of harassment emerge more easily in such environments.
This is precisely where the shadow care chain comes into play. When care is not discussed, when the care responsibilities are not shared fairly, and when those carrying this burden are not seen, even interventions launched with feminist intentions can produce new inequalities within themselves.
3. Breaking Shadow Care Chains: Making Care Part of the Design
Breaking shadow care chains is not possible by viewing the issue as an individual matter that can be solved simply by workers resting outside of work hours or recovering through their own means. Care is not a realm of sacrifice that humanitarian workers must undertake alone; it is the most fundamental operational cost that allows a project to come to life. To break this chain, placing care at the center of design, budgeting, and institutional policy—rather than treating it as a personal matter—prepares a healthier ground for all stakeholders.
The following concrete steps can be taken to build this structural transformation:
- Budgeting and Making Care Visible: To read the human costs of projects more realistically, we can make care needs part of the budget instead of assuming they are invisible. Adding items such as childcare, elderly care, pet boarding, or domestic support services to project budgets as “eligible expenses” provides financial support for the gap left behind by the field worker and lightens the load in the shadow care chain.
- Flexible and Predictable Calendars Managing Uncertainty: Acknowledging the “standby fatigue” created by the inability to plan in disaster and crisis zones can move processes to a more humane pace. Including care support allowances in fund designs to reduce the burden of uncertainty helps the team maintain their domestic order.
- Institutionalizing Active Recovery Mechanisms: We can view recovery not as passive leave given after returning from the field, but as an active process that improves project quality. Defining reflective sessions integrated into project calendars, regular supervision support, and collective care spaces to prevent secondary trauma as a professional right creates a sustainable working culture.
- Strategic Partnership of Donors: The role of funding organizations is not limited to determining the grant amount. They can strengthen the civil sphere by taking a system-building role in three areas:Flexible Budget Items: Explicitly defining and encouraging care expenses (child/elderly care, psychosocial support, transportation) as eligible costs.Holistic Wellbeing Investments: Preventing burnout by budgeting for supervision, therapy, and collective care spaces for funded teams.Care-Based Capacity Development: Transforming the ecosystem by funding training that strengthens institutions’ human resources, conflict resolution, and care-based leadership capacities.
When we move care from a cycle of debt to a model of fair distribution, it becomes possible to ensure that social healing is sustainable. As care justice is achieved, instead of opening new gaps elsewhere while healing a wound in one place, we can strengthen a network of solidarity where we heal together.
References
- Arlie Russell Hochschild (2000). Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value. One of the first texts to introduce the concept of global care chains. Essential for understanding how care relocates.
- Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (2001). Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work.
