En Route to Recovery: Diversity and vulnerability in care work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

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.

Our project will focus on employees performing vital COVID-19 related jobs: providing individual care to vulnerable clients in both organisational and home settings. We will examine how diverse people (in Finland, Canada, Scotland/UK and South Africa) who work/have worked in formal and informal care address challenges by collaboratively examining their ideas to ease risks and develop opportunities to deliver and receive care.

Specifically, we will analyse how care workers in precarious positions (women, LGBTI2S people, and migrant status or minority ethnic people) are experiencing COVID-19 crises in their work, and how they see a post-pandemic future. Our research is based on the United Nations (UN) research recovery roadmap and this Call's focus on reducing inequalities and vulnerabilities, and building a resilient, inclusive, and sustainable society. We will apply both quantitative and innovative qualitative methods to investigate how care sector workers have experienced the pandemic and how they see their post-pandemic times at work.

Research participants will explore their working lives during and after the pandemic. We will conduct a cross-cultural narrative analysis with an intersectionality approach using longitudinal participatory methods (photovoice and soundsourcing). This information will be supplemented with a systematic literature review and secondary data. In collaboration with stakeholders, we will develop policy recommendations and share good practices with institutions and services responsible for care workers. Our collaborative approach with all stakeholders will provide sustainable suggestions and policy recommendations that should have worldwide application.