Care discontinuities. Paid domestic work during the COVID-19 crisis

After the lecture, we will have a discussion. The meeting will be held on Zoom. Registration required (open until 3.02.2021) via the application form on our website. We will e-mail the link to the meeting to registered participants. We are planning live streaming of Facebook. The meeting will be recorded and archived on our YouTube channel and in Resources on Biennale website. To protect your image, we ask you to keep your cameras and microphones off during the entire event. But we do encourage you to join the discussion and send us questions on the chat. The moderators  will ask them on your behalf.

The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in radical shifts in the sector of paid household and care work. Many people working as nannies, babysitters, house cleaners, or personal care assistants lost their jobs and their only source of income. For others, the continuation of work means the necessity to risk their health or life, or facing restrictions introduced by their employers. However, the current crisis confirms diagnoses domestic workers have been making for a long time. Paid domestic work, often performed by migrant women within global care chains, is marked by lack of social benefits, low pay, and inequalities in negotiating employment conditions. Anna Rosińska’s lecture will be devoted to the situation of women carrying out paid household and care work during the pandemic, and their strategies of coping with the crisis. Based on the research conducted in the USA and Italy, she will also talk about the activity of organised domestic workers’ movements operating in these countries.”