Work in pandemic times: Exploring precarious continuities in paid domestic work in India

Abstract

Research on crisis have brought to fore the necessity of studying the gendered impact of such events. Covid-19 too has shown how gender relations play a role in the political economy of crisis, relief and response as well as recovery. This article focusses on the experiences of paid domestic workers in India who are among the most invisible and marginalized of India's informal workers and largely excluded from labor discourse and employment legislation. With Covid-19, the precariousness characterizing the sector has also been further exposed and exacerbated, with vast numbers of workers now facing significant challenges to livelihood, as well as several new/additional pressures and risks, both at work and at home. In this article, we examine these Covid-related challenges, drawing on interviews conducted with domestic workers, NGO practitioners, and labor rights' activists in Delhi and Kolkata between April and August 2020. We show how, during the national lockdown, many domestic workers in these cities experienced increased insecurity related to jobs and housing, as well as an increased control and surveillance at home. Furthermore, with the partial easing of lockdown and the associated 'return' to work, many experienced reduced bargaining power at work, increasingly blurred roles, and heavier workloads. Workers also experienced more overt forms of avoidance behavior, linked to ideas of caste/class and more recent notions of 'hygiene'/'distancing'. In detailing these experiences and contextualizing them within a much longer history of invisibilization and marginalization facing workers engaged in social reproduction, we draw attention to what we call the 'precarious continuities' in paid domestic work. We argue that the crisis allows for a lens to widen the theoretical understanding around social reproduction as a form of underpaid and devalued labor.

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