Global Restructuring of Social Reproduction and Its Invisible Work in Urban Revitalization

This chapter concerns the intertwining processes of transnational social reproduction and urban revitalization of the Rustbelt - the term euphemistically used in reference to the industrial regions of the United States after manufacturing capital started leaving in the 1960s for locations with cheaper labour and higher profit margins. It focuses on to a more detailed discussion of how social reproduction comes to serve crises of capitalism in this latest era of global capitalism. The chapter shows how social reproduction work performed by local and transnational families is made invisible; not only through its gendered normalization but also through its spatial fragmentation both across the globe and within existing postcolonial racialized urban hierarchies. It highlights how displaced workers’ transnational social reproduction involves place-making in their places of origin and destinations. Feminist urban scholars have long established that gendered labour and social reproduction are central to production of urban space.