During the last two decades the ‘new economy’ has come to epitomize many things in society,

widening its territorial and intellectual coverage from the dot-coms, powered by the rise of

websites, internet firms and the tech industry, more generally to all types of immaterial and

innovation-driven work and changing living conditions, both nationally and beyond borders. In

relation to work, the ‘new economy’ often refers to changes in the ways the work is conducted,

due to advances in information technology, globalization, and the commodification of

knowledge.

On the other hand, the intersections between new types of transnational work, migrating

workers, gender and new types of global dependencies and interdependencies have been

analysed and discussed widely in relation to changing care work and global care chains but also

in relation to global companies, commodity production and to global commodity chains. The

questions of how care is understood in the global context and how is it shaped by the social and

political institutions and contexts that operate from the top down, show how care is changing

and being changed by politics. Despite these changes care work remains work with gendered

subtexts that are in the analyses shown to be tied to a culturally feminine quality of caring, and

thus subjected to the pressures of the new capitalism and new economy. We argue that this

assumption is built on the assumed connection of care work belonging to the ‘old economy’ and

being in stark contrast of the ‘new economy’.