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Sarwer, Amna
(2024).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.00101104
Abstract
Care work is precarious, low-paid, feminised labour that relies heavily on migrant workers. This study explores the experiences of precarious care work of migrant women of colour shaped by temporal migration regimes, workplace inequalities and embodied precarity. This study examines bordering practices of migration regimes and meso-level organisational inequalities, and how they influence the vulnerabilities and embodied violence in care work.
In addition, I have analysed the social reproduction of migrant and racialised women and their families both locally and transnationally. I note that borders extract precarious labour by controlling racialised women’s access to entitlements and increasing their unpaid responsibilities. These restrictions seemed to lower the costs of labour while extracting labour power. While previous studies have examined the experiences of care workers, research on the intersection of bordering, temporalities and precarity in care work is limited. I also contribute to the literature on intersectionality by highlighting the role of time as a system of power in migration regimes and organisations where migrant and racialised women are subject to racialised time. This study uses intersectionality as its theoretical framework in conjunction with social reproduction and also draws on concepts of precarity, bordering and racial time. I have conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with women working in care homes over eight months and analysed this data through thematic analysis. This study argues that contemporary bordering practices within the UK along with capitalism devalue care work and deplete the bodies of migrant racialised women. I have foregrounded the notion of temporal borders and temporal dispossession that channel racialised and gendered workforce in care homes and produce cheap labour to be exploited in care work. I have also foregrounded the notion of slow violence that occurs in care homes due to racialised temporalities, embodied care work and normalised racialised and gendered violence. I note that women are subject to internal bordering in their social reproduction as they are not allowed to access welfare services in the UK and consequently, they draw on their informal networks of support.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
