The main goal of this paper is to identify the impact of the out-migration of females from Ukraine on the structure and operation of care services and to analyse its gender implications for the family and society in Ukraine. The key analytical concept used in the study is the ‘care diamond’, understood as the architecture that explains the relationship between the state, the market, the family, and the community in care provision. The argument of the paper is that the out-flow of women from Ukraine results in a ‘care deficit’ in the sending society and alters the operation of the care diamond due to the increasing role of the family in its structure, which in turn tends to outsource its care functions to the market while preserving the responsibility for the organisational and financial backing of paid home care. The paper shows that the emerging ‘care crisis’ in Ukraine results from the strategy of ‘crisis transfer’ employed by post-industrial nations to shift the burden of multiple crises from the nucleus of the world system to its periphery. In conclusion, the paper offers policy proposals for the development of coherent policy strategies aimed toward covering key sectors of the Ukrainian care diamond.

Keywords: care diamond in Ukraine, Ukrainian care migration, gender implications of care drain

Suggested bibliographic reference for this article: Tolstokorova, A.V. (2013). Gender Implications of Care Migration for the Operation of Care Diamond in Ukraine. Diversities, 15(1), 37-50. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://newdiversities.mmg.mpg.de/?page_id=1858