Migrant services and the reconfiguration of social reproduction as capital accumulation

Abstract Much of past feminist theorization of social reproduction has concentrated on the domestic sphere. However, in multiple domains such as education, childcare, elder care, health care, the delivery of goods, and migrant settlement, first the state and non-profit organizations and increasingly corporate profit-making service industries emerged as significant providers. In this transformed world of social reproduction, the initial query of feminist theorists about the relationship between social reproduction and capital accumulation must again be addressed. This return to a theorization of social reproduction in what is often considered the humanitarian sector of capitalist economies must encompass the labor of precarious workers and unpaid volunteers. Building on but going beyond the feminist debate about social reproduction, this paper explores the relationship between the public–private domain of service delivery and capital accumulation in migrants’ services. In so many instances, humanitarian activities in sectors such as migrant services have become the local face of a multiscalar migration industry. Through an exploration of the delivery of migrant services in a disempowered city in eastern Germany, the paper explicates the dynamics through which social reproduction activities are commoditized and are increasingly linked to locations and mechanisms of capital accumulation through the extraction of surplus value.