A strange tale

Abstract

We are going through such challenging times that dealing with reality is sometimes easier through fiction. Therefore, we tell the tale of a faraway land where poor women — mostly black — who make a living as domestic servants are particularly impacted by the COVID‐19 pandemic. Their abject bodies are part of a form of necropolitics that separates those who must live from those who can die. Their bodies do not matter, as they are perceived as mere working tools. And what sounds like a strange tale is the true reality of millions of women during the pandemic, in a land that is not so far away as it seems.

Youth, Precarious Work and the Pandemic

“…Hospitality labour also requires face-to-face interaction, meaning that as Dobusch and Kreissl (2020) observe, hospitality workers are part of the group of relatively disadvantaged workers who face unemployment whilst those in professional occupations work at home during lockdowns. This observation echoes other publications addressing the relationship between quarantine and privilege (Salamanca & Vargas, 2020;Saraiva & Rampazo, 2020) which shows that quarantine restrictions are experienced and negotiated by workers along existing axes of structural inequality. While this literature-particularly the work of Dobusch and Kreissl (2020)-provides a framing for our research, this review also shows that the experiences of workers such as those in hospitality are largely absent from the literature on the social dynamics of COVID-19.…”

What life in favelas can teach us about the COVID‐19 pandemic and beyond: Lessons from Dona Josefa

“…Upon returning from a trip to Italy, a patroa (employer) knew she was ill, but hid this information and refused to release the domestic helper during the pandemic. The worker soon contracted the virus and died a few days later (Saraiva & Rampazo, 2020).…”

“…In contrast to conventional prescriptions of impartiality in academic research, we interweave our reflections with those of Dona Josefa who acts as representative of one of the many disenfranchised communities that are currently confronting one of the worst crises in recent history, in one of the most inequitable countries in the world (Saraiva & Rampazo, 2020). Overall, we offer a shift from knowledge gleaned from institutional and privileged spaces in the Global North to knowledge gained by observing individual and collective struggles in favelas of the Global South.…”

“… 2 2 A commonly held belief among poor patients is that the State is more willing to kill than cure. This belief reflects their status in Brazilian necropolitics as “disposable bodies” with “ungrievable lives” (Saraiva & Rampazo, 2020). …”