The Irish Catholic Female Religious and the Transnationalisation of Care: An Historical Perspective

The transnational turn in sociological studies of care and welfare is generating new research agendas focused on the circulation and hybridisation of social ideas, values, practices, resources, relations and provision across political borders. This article examines neglected aspects within care transnationalisation research by focusing on the involvement of the Irish Catholic female religious from a historical perspective. Successive histories of female religious care migrations reveal Catholic religious orders of women to be the epitome of a flexible, hyper-mobile labour force. The nature of religious life combined with the social, cultural, economic and organisational capacities of the Catholic Church rendered female religious orders pivotal to the formation of border-spanning care labour networks through which Catholic ideas and practices of carework circulated to forge and sustain links and connections between Ireland and many other places worldwide. The discussion emphasises the necessity of attending to ‘counter-geographies’ of global care migrations, the interlocking nature of religious and secular care migration and historical antecedents of contemporary care transnationalisation processes in future research programmes