The crisis of social reproduction in rural Mexico: Challenging the ‘re-privatization of social reproduction’ thesis

Warning of a global crisis of social reproduction, feminist IPE has come a long way to demonstrate how the restructuring of the global political economy increases obstacles to exercise social reproduction activities and thereby endangers social reproduction tout court. While feminist IPE explicitly points to the need for empirical studies of the ways in which this global crisis of social reproduction manifests itself in specific contexts, much of the literature remains rather theoretical and at the macro level. This article addresses this gap with a case study of the crisis of social reproduction in rural Mexico, focusing on the transformations of the conditions of social reproduction, gender regimes and the roles of children. The findings of this case study challenge the universal applicability of the ‘(re-)privatization of social reproduction’ thesis. The main argument is that instead of emphasizing the shifts between the public and the private sphere and the retreat of the state from social provisioning, it is essential to reorient our focus towards the changing and context-specific forms of state involvement, and their implications for the transformation of social reproduction conditions, if we are to gain a better understanding of the variety of ways in which the global crisis of social reproduction manifests itself in different locations.