The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented strains on formal and informal care work, worldwide. Paradoxically, the pandemic created new jobs and possibilities in care work, but the jobs remain physically and mentally strenuous, low paid, and often with fixed-term, precarious contracts and high turnover rates. These jobs present significant health risks for workers, given the potential to contract and spread the virus. We study employees performing vital COVID-19 related jobs, providing individual care to vulnerable clients in both organisational and home settings; how diverse people (in Finland, Canada, UK and South Africa) who have worked in formal and informal care address challenges to ease risks and develop opportunities to deliver and receive care. We analyse how care workers in precarious positions (women, LGBTI people, migrant status or minority ethnic people) are experiencing COVID-19 crises in their work, and how they see a post-pandemic future.

2022

2024