From Crisis to Catastrophe

Care, COVID, and Pathways to Change

Edited by Mignon Duffy, Amy Armenia, and Kim Price-Glynn

SERIES: Carework in a Changing World

Rutgers University Press

The COVID pandemic has shaken the material and social foundations of the world more than any event in recent history and has highlighted and exacerbated a longstanding crisis of care. While these challenges may be freshly visible to the public, they are not new. Over the last three decades, a growing body of care scholarship has documented the inadequacy of the social organization of care around the world, and the effect of the devaluation of care on workers, families, and communities. In this volume, a diverse group of care scholars bring their expertise to bear on this recent crisis. In doing so, they consider the ways in which the existing social organization of care in different countries around the globe amplified or mitigated the impact of COVID. They also explore the global pandemic's impact on the conditions of care and its role in exacerbating deeply rooted gender, race, migration, disability, and other forms of inequality.

The editors of From Crisis to Catastrophe are three of the most important scholars of care work in the 21st century. In this book they bring together scholars from many regions across the globe, whose work has the potential to identify key strategies to create a safer, healthier, and more just economy. Joya Misra, coauthor of The New Handbook of Political Sociology

From Crisis to Catastrophe is a very timely book, focusing on two topics that have received great attention recently: care and COVID-19. The editors, scholars specialized in the topic, have gathered a group of outstanding experts from multiple institutions and countries to address this new phenomenon. Camila Arza, research fellow at National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina

Even before COVID-19, severe shortages existed in supplies of nurses, home health workers, nurse aides, day care workers, and others able to provide similar care, largely due to inadequate payment and cultural norms belittling the value of what had been considered 'women’s work.' This book explores the ways the pandemic exposed those deficiencies and exacerbated them to the point of collapse, pointing out the especially high burden borne by 'low-skilled' care workers of color, including personal illness and death of caregivers. Family Medicine

MIGNON DUFFY is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts - Lowell. Her scholarship is focused on the intersections of paid care work with gender, race, citizenship, and class inequalities. She was co-editor of Caring on the Clock: The Complexities and Contradictions of Paid Care Work (Rutgers University Press, 2015) and author of Making Care Count: A Century of Gender, Race and Paid Care Work (Rutgers University Press, 2011).

AMY ARMENIA is Professor of sociology at Rollins College. She has published work on child care, care work, and family leave in Work and Occupations, the Journal of Family Issues, and Social Science Research. She was co-editor of Caring on the Clock: The Complexities and Contradictions of Paid Care Work (Rutgers University Press, 2015).

KIM PRICE-GLYNN is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her research addresses gender, paid and unpaid care work. She has published in Gender & Society; Gender, Work & Organization; and Work, Employment & Society. She is author of Strip Club: Gender, Power, and Sex Work (New York University Press, 2010).

Introduction
MIGNON DUFFY, AMY ARMENIA, AND KIM PRICE-GLYNN

PART ONE Crisis
1 Beyond Wealth-Care: Pandemic Dreams for a Just and Caring Future
JOAN C. TRONTO
2 Latin America’s Response to COVID-19: The Risk of Sealing an Unequal Care Regime
JULIANA MARTÍNEZ FRANZONI ANDVEENA SIDDHARTH
3 COVID-19, Global Care, and Migration
ITO PENG
4 Black Lives Matter: Structural Racism, Sexism, and Carework in the United States
ODICHINMA AKOSIONU, JANETTE DILL, MIGNON DUFFY, AND J’MAG KARBEAH
5 Disability, Ableism, and Care during COVID-19 in the United States
LAURA MAULDIN
6 Unpaid Care in Public Places: Tensions in the Time of COVID-19
PAT ARMSTRONG AND JANNA KLOSTERMANN

PART TWO Catastrophe
7 The Right to Care at Stake: The Syndemic Emergency in Latin America
MARÍA NIEVES RICO AND LAURA C. PAUTASSI
8 At the Crossroads of the Employment and the Care
Crises: Care Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic
VALERIA ESQUIVEL
9 Caring for Children and the Economy: The Uneven Effects of the Pandemic on Childcare Workers, Primary School Teachers, and Unpaid Caregivers
PILAR GONALONS-PONS AND JOHANNA S. QUINN
10 COVID-19 and Care for the Elderly People in Africa: An Analysis of South Africa’s Mitigation Measures
ZITHA MOKOMANE AND AMEETA JAGA
11 Transnational Family Caregiving during a Global Pandemic
KEN CHIH-YAN SUN

PART THREE Aftermath
12 Cheap Praise: Supplemental Pay for Essential Workers in the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic
FRANZISKA DORN, NANCY FOLBRE, LEILA GAUTHAM, AND MARTHA MACDONALD
13 Migrants in Europe’s Domestic and Care Sector: The Institutional Response
SABRINA MARCHETTI AND MERITA MESIÄISLEHTO
14 Budgeting Care Services during the COVID-19 Crisis
ORLY BENJAMIN
15 Policy, Culture, and COVID-19: European Childcare Policies during the Pandemic
THURID EGGERS, CHRISTOPHER GRAGES, AND BIRGIT PFAU-EFFINGER

PART FOUR Transformation
16 Exposing Fault Lines, Flaring Tensions, and the Need for New Alliances: Home Care in the Time of COVID-19 in Ontario, Canada
CYNTHIA J. CRANFORD
17 End-of-Life Considerations during COVID-19
CINDY L. CAIN
18 COVID-19 and the Rise of the Care Robots
HELEN DICKINSON AND CATHERINE SMITH
19 Challenging Gender Regimes through Employee Voice in Carework
KATHERINE RAVENSWOOD
20 Building a Care Infrastructure in the United States
JULIE KASHEN
Epilogue: Care in Crisis: Convergences and Divergences
MIGNON DUFFY, AMY ARMENIA, AND KIM PRICE-GLYNN

Acknowledgments
References
Notes on Contributors
Index