"If I lose this, I have nothing”: ‘carrier' women during the Spanish-Moroccan border closure

The closure of the Spanish Southern border between Morocco and the Spanish city of Melilla induced by Covid-19 disrupt the work and life course of thousands of women crossing merchandise on the border. This research analyzes the survival strategies of these women after the border closure and the transformations of this unequal region. Using a Grounded Theory approach, participant observation and interviews to carrier women and informants were conducted in Melilla in 2021. Migration, family support and other precarious feminized jobs were found to be the most common survival alternatives. The conclusions point out that the border closure and the changes affecting the region of Nador may be the end of this income source for these women. This analysis contributes with new data on the global feminization of survival, although further research on these strategies is needed due to the constant changes in this border. © 2023, Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. All rights reserved.

Intersections of caste, class, and gender in healthcare sanitation work in India: Social work imperatives for restructuring marginalized women's care work

Housekeeping and sanitary workers are crucial for the functional efficiency and hygiene of healthcare facilities. In India, women from oppressed castes and backward classes are predominantly recruited in these occupations. The work, regarded as “polluting,” is stigmatized, devalued, and lies at the historical and sociocultural intersections of caste, class, and gender. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper utilizes the concepts of “feminization of labor” and “care ethics” to read caste into an intersectional theoretical analysis of the organization of marginalized women's labor in such essential, yet invisibilized healthcare work. An exploratory narrative review of literature focusing exclusively on marginalized healthcare housekeepers and sanitation workers in India is undertaken and supplemented with a critical analysis of labor laws and policies to trace the sustained reproduction of the caste-based sexual division of labor in these occupations. I propose that their exploitative terms and conditions are sustained by what I refer to as the “feminine caste contract” – a complex sociopolitical and legal arrangement of precarious, casteist, and gendered work conditions. Recognizing the exploitation inherent in this contract, recommendations are made for social work education and practice to play a key role in restructuring marginalized women's labor in essential care work. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

"Ocean Optimism" and Resilience: Learning From Women's Responses to Disruptions Caused by COVID-19 to Small-Scale Fisheries in the Gulf of Guinea

This study examines the response of women to disruptions caused by COVID-19 in small-scale fisheries (SSF) in the Gulf of Guinea (GOG). It interrogates the concept of resilience and its potential for mitigating women's vulnerability in times of adversity. We define resilience as the ability to thrive amidst shocks, stresses, and unforeseen disruptions. Drawing on a focus group discussion, in-depth interviews with key informants from Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria, and a literature review, we highlight how COVID-19 disruptions on seafood demand, distribution, labour and production acutely affected women and heightened their pre-existing vulnerabilities. Women responded by deploying both negative and positive coping strategies. We argue that the concept of resilience often romanticises women navigating adversity as having 'supernatural' abilities to endure disruptions and takes attention away from the sources of their adversity and from the governments' concomitant failures to address them. Our analysis shows reasons for "ocean optimism" while also cautioning against simplistic resilience assessments when discussing the hidden dangers of select coping strategies, including the adoption of digital solutions and livelihood diversification, which are often constructed along highly gendered lines with unevenly distributed benefits.

The COVID-19 Pandemic, the Crisis of Care, and Mexican Immigrants in the United States: A Preliminary Analysis

In the transition from Fordist to flexible accumulation in the last decades of the twentieth century, social reproduction was externalized onto families and communities. In the United States, this “crisis of care” was mitigated by the incorporation of illegalized Mexican immigrants’ low-cost reproductive labor in private and public services. From a feminist perspective on social reproduction and migration, we argue that the impacts of the COVID-19 economic crisis on Mexican immigrant communities were related to the specific ways that immigrants’ labor was incorporated into the circuits of social reproduction. Drawing on interviews with migrants from rural central Mexico in the United States, we analyze how immigrants absorbed the worst effects of the crisis by cheapening their labor, transferring unpaid reproductive labor to other household members, and engaging in informalized activities. Anti-immigrant policies exacerbated the precarious situations of undocumented immigrants and mixed-status Mexican families during the pandemic.

The Ethnicization and Feminization Process of Labor: Women and Georgian Labor in Tea Agriculture

Ethnicization and feminization of labor are intertwined processes. Although each has its own internal history, they have been taken to new dimensions with capitalism and neoliberalism. In this respect, gender and race are instrumentalized for the exploitation of labor. There have been several studies on the inclusion of race and gender in the labor market in considering wage labor. However, not many studies focus on nation-state building before labor markets, race, and women as unpaid family members. In this study, the issue of unpaid female labor in tea agriculture is examined. It also considers the ethnicization processes of Georgian labor. These two processes are explained by the labor value theory by placing tea agriculture at the center. Moreover, the effect of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the processes will also be discussed. Because the process of ethnicization and feminization are multidimensional and multi-agency processes, qualitative interviews were conducted with 48 people from different structures and actors. The interviews were recorded, resolved, and multiple structure analyses were performed. Survey data applied in a different context in another study for Georgians were also used as data sources in this study as ethnicization and feminization of labor are fed from a similar background and are used interchangeably in case of crisis.