Covid-19 Fieldnotes from Our Grantees

Rachel Voth Schrag and Leila Wood’s research, supported by an SSRC Covid-19 Rapid-Response Grant, focused on how the pandemic affected survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual harassment, and the work of advocacy and support organizations, in the United States. In “balancing safety from violence with safety from the virus” at a moment in which domestic and sexual violence intensified, key focal points for survivors and advocates included the constraints on emergency shelters and the shift to virtual services by support organizations. The authors argue that public support of both housing and technology is needed for survivors’ needs to be better addressed in the future.

For years, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, Venezuelans have been leaving their country due to rising economic insecurity and political conflict. Now, due to the pandemic, many face new or heightened forms of precarity, in particular as they seek work in countries in which their skills may not match labor market needs, or as they are excluded from opportunities due to their outsider status. Here, Mariya Ivancheva and Jesica Lorena Pla examine how Venezuelan migrants in Argentina worked through the pandemic, eliciting and analyzing their reflections on job security and sense of stability, as well as how their experiences in Venezuela shape their views of Argentina and back home.

Among those deeply impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic were people suffering from chronic illnesses, like silicosis, a respiratory disease. In this essay, Başak Can, Zeynel Gül and Arda Yalçın examine how workers in Turkey suffering from silicosis navigate the hurdles created by the pandemic, including being unable to access routine medical care and job precarity. However, the authors found these workers used self-care practices and mobilized their networks to survive the pandemic the best they could.

The Covid-19 pandemic has especially disrupted the lives of people living with chronic illnesses and disabilities and those who care for them. Here, Laura Mauldin examines how the spouses of people living with chronic illnesses and disabilities navigated the care of their loved ones during the pandemic. Through ethnographic research, Mauldin explains how these caregiving spouses took on the brunt of care for their loved ones due to lockdown restrictions and fears of bringing the virus into their homes. The experiences of these patients and their caretakers, Mauldin argues, have been made invisible by both the pandemic and existing policies that do not value caregivers.

In this essay, Patricia Van Katwyk and Veen Wong examine the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on personal support workers in Ontario, Canada. The authors share findings from their SSRC-supported research, which leveraged photovoice—a form of community-based storytelling using images—to facilitate the sharing of experiences characterized by precarity and grief.

Based on their research supported by an SSRC Covid-19 Rapid Response Grant, Dyah Pitaloka and Frenia Nababan describe the situation of foreign domestic workers (FDWs), focusing on Indonesian women working in Hong Kong and Singapore, under lockdown conditions. Now confined to their employers’ homes, work demands have increased, and FDWs are forced to use potentially dangerous cleaning products to sanitize the domestic space of their bosses. The authors argue that Covid did not create these precarities in the working conditions of FDWs, but exacerbates existing social structural features of the host societies that marginalize migrant workers, and especially women.

Student food insecurity has plagued Australian universities over the last decade and has only worsened with the Covid-19 pandemic. Through their SSRC-funded research, Jane Dyson, Craig Jeffrey, and Gyorgy Scrinis examine how the pandemic affected international students enrolled in universities in the Australian state of Victoria. International students, they explain, were particularly impacted by the pandemic due to their precarious work circumstances and being initially left out of state support initiatives.

Migrant farmworkers, many of whom belong to communities of color that have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19, are essential workers whose labor has kept people fed throughout the pandemic. In this essay based on their SSRC-funded research, Jennifer Bair and Kathryn Babineau report on the experiences of migrant farmworkers in Vermont’s dairy industry, analyzing the role that worker-driven organizing has played in supporting safer workplaces. When the pandemic hit, a civic infrastructure was already in place in the form of previously established groups that migrant workers trusted ready to disseminate information, testing, and eventually vaccines.

While Covid-19 measures have been detrimental to millions around the world, workers in the informal sector have been particularly affected. Through their SSRC-funded research, Ademola Ajuwon and Grace Ajuwon investigated how lockdown measures intended to prevent the spread of Covid-19 harmed the livelihoods of informal traders in Ibadan, Nigeria. Having conducted various interviews with informal traders, the authors describe how the measures disrupted traders’ income and businesses, and they argue an effective response to the pandemic requires government assistance.

SSRC Covid-19 grantees Timwa Lipenga and Hendrina Kachapila’s essay reflects on how governments in Malawi—both British colonial and contemporary independent—have attempted to deal with pandemics. The authors’ research on Spanish flu and smallpox campaigns under colonialism provides important background for understanding Malawi’s response to Covid 19, and how Malawians varyingly follow, resist, or avoid government mandates. A tendency to manage pandemics in a top-down manner, without adequate consultation with everyday people and how they view the nature of illness, is shared by regimes past and present.