IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/soa/wpaper/241.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Essential Work: Using A Social Reproduction Lens to Investigate the Re-Organisation of Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Sara Stevano

    (Department of Economics, SOAS University of London)

  • Rosimina Ali

    (Institute of Social and Economic Studies (IESE))

  • Merle Jamieson

    (Department of Economics, SOAS University of London)

Abstract

COVID-19 has shaken a foundational pillar of global capitalism: the organisation of work. Whilst workers have commonly been categorised based on skills, during the pandemic the ‘essential worker’ categorisation has taken prominence. This paper explores the concept of essential work from a global feminist social reproduction perspective. The global perspective is complemented by a zoom-in on Mozambique as a low-income country in the Global South, occupying a peripheral position in global and regional economies and with a large share of vulnerable and essential workers. We show that the meaning of essential work is more ambiguous and politicised than it may appear and, although it can be used as a basis to reclaim the value of socially reproductive work, its transformative potential hinges on the possibility to encompass the most precarious and transnational dimensions of (re)production.

Suggested Citation

  • Sara Stevano & Rosimina Ali & Merle Jamieson, 2021. "Essential Work: Using A Social Reproduction Lens to Investigate the Re-Organisation of Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Working Papers 241, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
  • Handle: RePEc:soa:wpaper:241
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.soas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-10/economics-wp241.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kate Meagher, 1995. "Crisis, Informalization and the Urban Informal Sector in Sub‐Saharan Africa," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 26(2), pages 259-284, April.
    2. Marilyn Power, 2004. "Social Provisioning As A Starting Point For Feminist Economics," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 3-19.
    3. Carlos Nuno Castel-Branco, 2014. "Growth, capital accumulation and economic porosity in Mozambique: social losses, private gains," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(sup1), pages 26-48, October.
    4. Silvia Wojczewski & Stephen Pentz & Claire Blacklock & Kathryn Hoffmann & Wim Peersman & Oathokwa Nkomazana & Ruth Kutalek, 2015. "African Female Physicians and Nurses in the Global Care Chain: Qualitative Explorations from Five Destination Countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-20, June.
    5. Scott Ross Baker & Contantine Yannelis, 2017. "Income Changes and Consumption: Evidence from the 2013 Federal Government Shutdown," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 23, pages 99-124, January.
    6. Siar, Sheila V., 2013. "From Highly Skilled to Low Skilled: Revisiting the Deskilling of Migrant Labor," Discussion Papers DP 2013-30, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
    7. Elena Baglioni, 2018. "Labour control and the labour question in global production networks: exploitation and disciplining in Senegalese export horticulture," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 111-137.
    8. Jonathan Pattenden, 2016. "Working at the margins of global production networks: local labour control regimes and rural-based labourers in South India," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(10), pages 1809-1833, October.
    9. Nick Bernards, 2019. "Placing African labour in global capitalism: the politics of irregular work," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(160), pages 294-303, April.
    10. Carlos Oya, 2013. "Rural wage employment in Africa: methodological issues and emerging evidence," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(136), pages 251-273, June.
    11. Unknown, 2005. "Forward," 2005 Conference: Slovenia in the EU - Challenges for Agriculture, Food Science and Rural Affairs, November 10-11, 2005, Moravske Toplice, Slovenia 183804, Slovenian Association of Agricultural Economists (DAES).
    12. Philip Oreopoulos, 2011. "Why Do Skilled Immigrants Struggle in the Labor Market? A Field Experiment with Thirteen Thousand Resumes," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 148-171, November.
    13. Kentikelenis, Alexander E. & Stubbs, Thomas H. & King, Lawrence P., 2015. "Structural adjustment and public spending on health: Evidence from IMF programs in low-income countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 169-176.
    14. Folbre, Nancy, 1986. "Hearts and spades: Paradigms of household economics," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 245-255, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tatiana López, 2021. "A practice ontology approach to labor control regimes in GPNs: Connecting ‘sites of labor control’ in the Bangalore export garment cluster," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(5), pages 1012-1030, August.
    2. De Blasis, Fabio, 2020. "Global horticultural value chains, labour and poverty in Tanzania," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 18(C).
    3. Oya, Carlos & Schaefer, Florian, 2021. "The politics of labour relations in global production networks: Collective action, industrial parks, and local conflict in the Ethiopian apparel sector," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    4. Annelien Gansemans & Marijke D’Haese, 2020. "Staying under the radar: constraints on labour agency of pineapple plantation workers in Costa Rica?," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(2), pages 397-414, June.
    5. Krzywdzinski, Martin & Lechowski, Grzegorz & Mählmeyer, Valentina, 2019. "Lean Work and Gender Inequalities: Manufacturing Consent at a Multinational Car Plant in Provincial Russia," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 10(2), pages 123-141.
    6. Kyle Herkenhoff & Lee Ohanian, 2019. "The Impact of Foreclosure Delay on U.S. Employment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 31, pages 63-83, January.
    7. Pilar Lopez-Llompart & G. Mathias Kondolf, 2016. "Encroachments in floodways of the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 81(1), pages 513-542, March.
    8. Michelle Sheran Sylvester, 2007. "The Career and Family Choices of Women: A Dynamic Analysis of Labor Force Participation, Schooling, Marriage and Fertility Decisions," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(3), pages 367-399, July.
    9. DAVID M. BLAU & WILBERT van der KLAAUW, 2013. "What Determines Family Structure?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 579-604, January.
    10. Mujcic, Redzo & Frijters, Paul, 2013. "Still Not Allowed on the Bus: It Matters If You're Black or White!," IZA Discussion Papers 7300, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Afanasyev, Dmitriy O. & Fedorova, Elena A. & Popov, Viktor U., 2015. "Fine structure of the price–demand relationship in the electricity market: Multi-scale correlation analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 215-226.
    12. Anthony Edo & Nicolas Jacquemet & Constantine Yannelis, 2019. "Language skills and homophilous hiring discrimination: Evidence from gender and racially differentiated applications," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 349-376, March.
    13. Peter Viggo Jakobsen, 2009. "Small States, Big Influence: The Overlooked Nordic Influence on the Civilian ESDP," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 81-102, January.
    14. Tal Gross & Timothy J. Layton & Daniel Prinz, 2022. "The Liquidity Sensitivity of Healthcare Consumption: Evidence from Social Security Payments," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 175-190, June.
    15. John Carter Braxton & Kyle F. Herkenhoff & Jonathan Rothbaum & Lawrence Schmidt, 2021. "Changing Income Risk across the US Skill Distribution: Evidence from a Generalized Kalman Filter," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 55, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    16. Billio, Monica & Casarin, Roberto & Osuntuyi, Anthony, 2016. "Efficient Gibbs sampling for Markov switching GARCH models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 37-57.
    17. Jan Babecký & Fabrizio Coricelli & Roman Horváth, 2009. "Assessing Inflation Persistence: Micro Evidence on an Inflation Targeting Economy," Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, vol. 59(2), pages 102-127, June.
    18. Lloyd, S. P., 2017. "Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Interest Rate Channel: Signalling and Portfolio Rebalancing," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1735, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    19. Ichiro Fukunaga, 2007. "Imperfect Common Knowledge, Staggered Price Setting, and the Effects of Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(7), pages 1711-1739, October.
    20. Albertazzi, Ugo & Gambacorta, Leonardo, 2009. "Bank profitability and the business cycle," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 393-409, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; essential work; social reproduction; dependence; Mozambique;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B54 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Feminist Economics
    • F66 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization - - - Labor
    • J46 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Informal Labor Market
    • J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - General
    • K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:soa:wpaper:241. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chandni Dwarkasing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desoauk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.