Transnationalism/ality has also been central to theories of ethnic group formation
and racialization in global society. These theories have focused on transnational
immigrant labour pools and new axes of inequality based on citizenship and noncitizenship
(see, e.g., Espiritu 2003). A popular motif in post-colonial theory is a
view of globalization as a new phase in post-colonial relations (Wai 2002). Similarly,
studies of transnationalism have emphasized the gendered nature of transnational
communities, changing gender patterns in transnational migration, and the impact
of globalization and transnationalism on the family. There has been an explosion
of research and theoretical reflection on women, gender and globalization. Predicated
on the recognition that the varied processes associated with globalization are
highly gendered and affect women and men differently, research has taken up such
themes as young women workers in export-processing enclaves, the feminization of
poverty, and the rise of transnational feminisms.
Notable here is Parreñas’s (2001) theory of the ‘international division of reproductive
labor’. Women from poor countries are relocating across nation-states
in response to the high demand for low-wage domestic work in richer nations. A
global South to global North fl ow of domestic workers has emerged, producing a
global economy of care-giving work and a ‘new world domestic order’ in which