Diane Elson’s (1998) compelling conceptual framework captured the multiple dimensions of social reproduction, examining the flows of resources (goods, services, labour and money) between the domestic (household), private (commercial) and public (state) sectors. These resource flows are mediated by gendered norms and values that regulate the sectors’ functions and their interrelationships with other sectors. Resource outflows could include unpaid domestic, subsistence, caring and voluntary community labour, while replenishing resource inflows could include health care, childcare, welfare provisioning and family and community support networks. A negative balance between outflow and inflow is damaging for the health and well-being of individuals, households and communities (at varied rates and levels in different contexts). My approach in this paper is to use the concepts of‘care diamonds’and‘depletion’to analyse the reconfigurations of care relationships post-migration in the experiences of Ethiopian MDWs in Lebanon and Ethiopian refugees in Australia. Designed as a multi-sited ethnographic (Marcus 1995) study in Australia, Lebanon and Ethiopia, the field research was completed in 2016-2017.