The public life of care: How caregivers in the United States and India frame their contributions

How do caregivers articulate the contributions of their work? Using data from two ethnographies—of an immigrant rights organization on the US–Mexico border, and of community health workers in Punjab, India—we emphasize frames that caregivers use in strategic public-facing moments to describe the value of their work. We argue that caregivers frame care as making direct contributions to public life, beyond the privatized realms of family and market usually associated with care, and toward an expansion of the rights of the marginalized. This “public life of care” illuminates new actors, sites, and dynamics in care.