Despensas y Rosarios (Food Pantries and Rosaries): Latina Women’s Care Work and Activism During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Keywords: care work, gender, Latinas, immigrant communities, COVID-19
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 22

Abstract

Due to longstanding racial, classed, and gendered inequities, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on U.S. minority populations, particularly Black and Latinx communities (Zamarripa & Roque 2021; Noe-Bustamante et al. 2021). Among the hardest hit have been Latina women, who have left the labor market in record numbers (Hernández et al. 2021) and taken on additional care work responsibilities at home and in their communities (Horsley 2021). In this paper, I draw on “remote ethnographic” research to analyze the cases of Latina activists in Chicago who have led pandemic relief efforts through their church networks and social media platforms. From organizing food drives and rosary meetings via Zoom to partnering with health professionals to set up free testing and vaccination sites, these long-term activists have tried to address the most pressing needs of their working-class and immigrant communities, often with limited resources. While these examples highlight the resiliency and gendered care work of community-based organizing, they also point to underlying issues of lack of health care access, punitive immigration laws, and temporary safety nets of a neoliberal state that has become dependent on exploited labor and volunteerism to meet people’s basic needs. Many of these immigrant communities who have had to organize resources on their own have been excluded from federal relief programs despite being overrepresented in the essential workforce. They have thus had to rely on women’s labor and “care work activism” to fill in for the role of the state.