Acknowledgments -
Foreword hy Jayati Ghosh -
Introduction -
Maya Jobn and Christa Wichterich -
PART I: NURSING IN INDIA:
1. Institutionalizing Feminine Caste-Based Labour: Nurses and Nursing Aides in Kolkata by Panchali Ray -
2. Hierarchization in Healthcare: Female Nurses and Ayahs in Private Healthcare in Siliguri, West Bengal by Hemantika Basu -
3. Our Issues are Different': Unionization of Permanent and Contract Nurses by Sneha Makkad -
4. Educational Hierarchy and the Segmented Nursing Labour Market in India: An Interlocking Phenomenon by Maya John -
5. Peoples Health in ASHAS Hands: Working without Rights and Entitlements by Semi Zafiur
6. Frontline Warriors, Care Extraction, and the State: Through the Lens of the COVID-19 Pandemic by Christa Wichterich -
PART I: INDIAN MIGRANT NURSES:
7. Nurse Emigration from Kerala: Revisiting the 'Brain Circulation' or "Trap' Question by Margaret Walton-Roberts and S. Irudaya Rajan -
8. Religion and Indian Nursing Employment in Italy: Three Cohorts of Migrant Women by Ester Gallo
9. Recruiting Nurses from Kerala: On Gender, Racism and the Nursing Profession in West Germany
Urmila Goel -
10. Indian Nurses in Germany: Life Stories. No More a Typical Indian Girl, Vingyan The First Nurses: A Photo Essay, Manoj Karian Kalguni Grateful for a Successful Life, Ely Vadakumcher -
11. Calling Kerala: The Invisible Care Work of Nurses within heir Transnational Families by Tanja Ablin
12. A Homeland Called Malayalam: Community Building in the Malayali Diaspora between Migration, Gende, and Transnationality by Philomina Chakkalakkal -
Notes on Contributors.

The recent global pandemic highlighted the crucial role played by (mostly female) care workers in providing health services across the world. At the same time, it exposed the deep vulnerabilities and precarities of their lives—abysmally low wages, long working hours, social prejudice, notorious undervaluation—at the hands of an uncaring and exploitative economic system. The editors of this volume identify this as ‘care extractivism’, a strategy that enables the simultaneous extraction and undervaluation of care work, something in which governments and societies are both complicit. Further, they point to the impact of liberalization and professionalization on the political economy of nursing wherein the market principle of cost efficiency leads to informalization, contract labour and hierarchization of nursing in both private and public hospitals.

The contributors to this important and timely book draw attention to the varied histories of health care work in India and of Indian nurses abroad. They look also at the recent struggles through which workers have tried to improve their working conditions and which represent a silver lining as they imbibe the potential to disrupt the chain of undervaluation, cost cutting, and poor quality healthcare.