Gender Inequality in Production and Reproduction

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Gender Inequality in Production and Reproduction

• Sarah Dyer,
• Linda McDowell, Adina Batnitzky,

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Emotional work/body work the caring labours of
migrants in the UKs National Health Service
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Case study

• West Central Hospital (NHS)
• 60 interviews with employees born and
  school-educated outside the UK

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Why ask about migration?

• Numbers/complexity
• Migrants and service sector work
• Gender and migration

http//www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id260

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Twofold characterisation of caring work

• Emotional labour (Hochschild 1983)
• Body work (Gubrium, 1975, Wolkowitz, 2002, 2006)

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Emotional labour

• Customer orientated bureaucracy (Kerfoot and
  Korczynski, 2005, Korczynski, 2001)
• Patients to customers
• Neo-liberal and managerial organization of care

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Body work

• Wolkowitz (2002 501) argues the worker is
  employed as much to carry dirts stigma as to
  labour
• Need to be explicit in recognizing, and
  therefore attempting to deal with, the centrality
  of body work to post industrial national and
  global economies. Wolkowitz (2002 499)

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Migrants caring labour at WCH
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Intense emotional labour

• Still its hard work and there is a lot, because
  the first time I see, you know, someone I saw
  someone die with the civil war. I havent seen
  someone dying naturally and that was hardest.
  Before they left I was heartbroken because the
  home, the nursing home the old people were dying
  a lot, you could see two or three people dying in
  one day and so I was heartbroken, you know.
  Sometimes youre so attached with someone and
  then you know and it was so hard for me, thats
  why. (Habiba, HCA, female, Somalia)

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• Oh dear, like for example, if the patient, like
  patients progress or patients deterioration,
  sometimes they panic and they're more aggressive
  than the patient most of the time, and the
  patient is okay but they are panicking and like
  insulting, verbal insults (Joy, nurse, female,
  Philippines)
• We can stay calmif we raise our voice, that
  again going toyou know, going to agitate the
  family and they will be more anxious and they
  will get more angry so I think it is better to
  stay calm (Parnal, nurse, female, India)

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Cultures of emotional labour

• Attitude is how you approach the patient, how you
  feel you're working. But here (in the UK) it is
  only skills and knowledge. Attitude (is) how you
  interact with the patient or like when you
  communicate to the patient, how is your facial
  expression? How is your body language? (Joy,
  nurse, female, Philippines)

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Caring as non-routine

• Oh dear, if you have to thoroughly wash, it takes
  about 15 to 30 minutes, it depends on how, you
  know, how dirty they are how difficult (they
  are) to move. Because sometimes when, after
  washing them, they poo again. I have to go back
  again and wash them. (Joy, nurse, female,
  Philippines)

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Prisoners of love (Folbre and Nelson 2000)

• A lot of Polish will come to the hospital, it is
  growing, so I cant see that Im useful, some of
  them dont speak English at all, they are really
  distressed and a new place, everything is new,
  different. (Krzysztof, Porter, male, Poland)

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• If they're short of staff, they will ask me if I
  can go on the ward to help the patients but I
  dont like it because the ward is too big
  laughing I really love old people. I love to
  help old people as well. Yeah, I have a pity for
  old people, so I go there and Ill make them
  breakfast and tidy the ward, like mop and clean
  the sink and going in their room, clean anything,
  check toilets, soap and stuff, so Im used to
  itI like caring, sometimes I go there and I sing
  for them. (Amber, cleaner, female, Jamaica)

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Cultures of body work

• I didn't realise that you have to wash the body
  and everything. Back home we dont do it, washing
  patients. We dont really do it. It's a relative
  doing it. (Catherine, nurse, female, Philippines)

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Jobs for migrants?

• In Morocco they said listen, if you go to
  Europe, like a domestic or sweeping the roads or
  what ever, you will find a job quickly snaps his
  fingers because the English people, they dont
  want to do this type of job. So they give them
  to foreigners. (Hafid, cleaning supervisor, male,
  Moroccan)

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• Because they throw me in South side where the old
  building is, because theyre changing the
  building and they would shuffle the staff, and
  they put me to elderly Ward which is like it's
  not permanent and theyre throwing patients,
  mostly like having mental problems or really
  waiting for a nursing home and everything, and
  it's really, for one, it's not really good
  conditions of where it is, it's an old building
  down there, it's not happy to work with because
  all patients are complaining, what is this style
  of work. (Catherine, nurse, female, Philippines)

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Conclusions

• Care organisation physical labour
  emotional labour (James 1992)
• Caring work gendered and devalued as both
  emotional labour and body work
• Migration shapes these mechanisms in important
  ways
• Valuable to not presuppose who does caring work