Sara R. Farris

Sara R. Farris is Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. 

She is a sociologist with expertise in migration, gender and the political economy of care and social reproduction. Her research is particularly concerned to address: the role that migrant and racialised workers play within economies of care and social reproduction; the financialisation and corporatisation of care and the racialisation of sexism. She is well known internationally for her research on “femonationalism”, or the mobilisation of feminist themes by nationalist parties within anti-immigration campaigns. 

She is the author of In the name of women's rights. The rise of femonationalism (2017) and co-editor of the Sage Handbook of Marxism (2021). She is currently working on a manuscript on Gender and Capitalism (Verso 2026) and on a project on the Coloniality of Care and Social Reproduction.

Social reproduction and colonial care chains

> 14 h 15

Since the early 2020s the UK has recruited hundreds of thousands of migrant care workers as it faces a huge care crisis where shortages in care are amongst the worse in recent history. An aspect of this current flow in labour mobility that has not received sufficient attention is the fact that the large majority of these migrant workers are women from former British colonies. While labour recruitment from the colonies is not new in British history as it regularly took place during colonial times and under the Commonwealth, it is worth noting that this new mass wave of labour mobility involves mostly women to be employed in the socially reproductive sectors of health and social care. Based on research with migrant workers employed in private care homes in London, this paper aims to explore the specific implications of colonial relations for understanding the contemporary capitalist re-organisation of social reproduction.