Impacts of the management of COVID-19: Reshaping understandings of precarity. An investigation of normative power in the case of female migrants working in the Danish cleaning inudstry during the pandemic
Authors
Kaik, Jesmin ; Olsen, Stine Bech ; Dervishi, Sidorela ; Damiani, Barbara
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2021
Submitted on
2021-05-28
Pages
1081
Abstract
This thesis investigates how Denmark’s management of COVID-19 created and reshaped conditions of precarity for female migrants employed in the cleaning industry, across both work and domestic life. We analyze how shifts in normative power during the pandemic legitimized specific policy and organizational practices, how these practices differentially affected female migrant cleaners, and how they experienced and responded to them. Using a qualitative, post-structuralist approach, we draw on Judith Butler’s conception of precarity as politically induced and apply analytical lenses of recognition, performativity, and performative spaces. The analysis is grounded in a contextualization of Danish pandemic measures and the distinctive features of the cleaning sector. Based on our findings, we propose understanding precarity as an ongoing process of precarization driven by changes in normative power that shape both objective and subjective dimensions of life and produce uneven vulnerabilities across space and time. The case highlights how gender, migration status, and sectoral position intersect to make the effects of pandemic governance unequal, even within a universal welfare state.
Dette speciale undersøger, hvordan den danske håndtering af COVID-19 skabte og omformede prekære vilkår for kvindelige migranter ansat i rengøringsbranchen, både i arbejdslivet og i hjemmet. Vi analyserer, hvordan skift i normativ magt under pandemien legitimerede bestemte politiske og organisatoriske praksisser, hvordan disse praksisser ramte kvindelige migranter forskelligt, og hvordan de oplevede og reagerede på dem. Med et kvalitativt, poststrukturalistisk udgangspunkt bygger vi på Judith Butlers forståelse af prekariatet som politisk frembragt og anvender analytiske greb om anerkendelse, performativitet og performative rum. Analysen er forankret i en kontekstualisering af danske pandemitiltag og rengøringssektorens særlige kendetegn. På baggrund af vores resultater foreslår vi at forstå prekærhed som en løbende proces af prekærisering drevet af ændringer i normativ magt, der former både objektive og subjektive livsvilkår og skaber ulige sårbarheder på tværs af rum og tid. Casen peger på, at køn, migrationsstatus og sektorplacering forstærker ulighed i effekterne af pandemistyring, selv i en universel velfærdsstat.
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Keywords
COVID-19 ; precarity ; precarisation ; gender ; migration ; cleaning industry ; space