With an emphasis on Africa, this study explores the feminist ethics of care as a paradigm for addressing the vulnerabilities and difficulties faced by migrant women. Based on Joan Tronto’s seminal work Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care, this session imagines works that portray a society in which providing care is valued as an essential aspect of human life. Tronto calls for a just and inclusive society that acknowledges and promotes care labor as critical to life, and her thoughts on moral boundaries challenge us to consider what is included and excluded in ethical and political frameworks. Due to colonial legacies and neoliberal policies, migrant women from Africa frequently experience economic instability, gender-based violence, and legal exclusions, highlighting the systemic inequities in care work distributed along gender, class, race, and ethnicity lines. Using case studies from advocacy groups, shelter networks, and grassroots organizations, this study demonstrates how care-focused initiatives provide migrant women with legal, financial, and emotional support in both host and home countries. It calls for narrative reconstruction and policies that restore agency, dignity, and belonging, emphasizing the feminist ethics of care as a powerful framework for rethinking migration policies, addressing precarity, and fostering equitable support systems for African migrant women in transnational contexts.
Please submit paper titles and abstracts for review via email to mdafong@crimson.ua.edu before February 28.