Rethinking global care chains through the perspective of heterogenous states, discursive framings and multi-level governance

Global and regional care chains have become the object of investigation and theorization. Scholars have traditionally applied a sociological bottom-up approach, but some attention has recently been focused on the role of the state. Despite this attention to states and the way they condition care chains, the existing frameworks are insufficient to grasp the complexity of potential struggles and tensions within states and at the various levels of the state. In outlining a broad and tentative analytical framework for exploring the role of the state in shaping global and regional care chains, this theoretical article combine discursive policy analysis with feminist state and multi-level governance theories. With attention to the role of the state, we focus on the framing of policy problems important for care chains, potential tensions between different framings w within a state and across the different levels of the state. And we argue that these framings should be investigated within both receiving and sending states.