Poor worker destabilized.e.s, poor worker mobilized.e.s. Social inequalities in times of pandemic(s)
Our general questioning could be summarized as follows: how have the measures taken against Covid-19 increased inequalities in the face of illness and employment?
Jobs disrupted by the health crisis
This research aims to highlight the way in which social inequalities and health measures taken in response to Covid-19 interacted during the beginning of 2020, and beyond. It proposes two parallel analytical movements. First, it focuses on poor workers who were ordered to continue working during the lockdown, either because their activity was deemed essential or because they could not telework, telework being an activity rather located among executives. We seek to understand the extent of potential overexposure to health risks, as well as to understand the experience of this period for these people, very often women. Then, the project aims to understand in depth the upheaval in employment induced by these same health measures, and the announced economic crisis. Jobs characterized by precariousness (such as temporary work in all sectors or catering professions) have been severely impacted, potentially worsening situations of poverty. We seek to take the exact measure of this phenomenon and to understand the strategies put in place by the people concerned to survive. In both cases, quantitative and qualitative methods (interviews) are articulated. Our general questioning could be summarized as follows: how have the measures taken against Covid-19 been able to accentuate inequalities in the face of illness and employment?
Building tools to deal with future pandemics
The choice to investigate in France, a country of the “North”, is explained by the relatively unprecedented situations in which this pandemic, and the measures that have been taken by governments, have placed populations. It is important to know the short, medium and long-term consequences of crisis management that could happen again. Indeed, many analyses suggest that human activity is likely to promote the emergence of epidemics: deforestation and destruction of natural habitats of animals in general, poaching, overpopulation of cities, are potential factors – and these phenomena do not seem likely to disappear. We therefore need tools that take into account social inequalities, to face them collectively. To do this, the study is based on eighteen interviews, conducted between December 2020 and April 2021. The majority of interviews were conducted by telephone. Employees were contacted via trade union organizations, social networks and, in one case, the personal network. The research focuses on the most affected departments, in particular Seine-Saint-Denis, but is also carried out in other departments, for comparison (for example, in Haute-Garonne).
Placing the Covid-19 epidemic in its social and political context
The idea that there are natural inequalities, particularly biological ones, that cannot be explained by social factors is widespread. However, some indicators raise questions. While the sources of contamination have been numerous and disparate, a certain number are concentrated at the bottom of the social scale: the industrial north of Italy, the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, which has the highest poverty rate in metropolitan France (28.6% according to INSEE in 2016), and more recently, slaughterhouses, places with a high concentration of workers. The epidemic therefore does not seem to be claiming its victims at random. This research puts to the test empirically what other research on epidemics has shown, particularly in West Africa for the case of Ebola (Gasquet-Blanchart, 2017): health crises forcefully reveal the inequalities that structure society, they accentuate them, they increase the risk for the most fragile sections of a population. This involves re-placing the epidemic in its social and political context.
To do this, it focuses on two categories of active people: those who continued to work because their activity was deemed essential and/or could not be done through telework and those who lost their job, formal or informal. For each category, we ask ourselves whether these situations were aggravating risk factors in the face of contamination and whether they were characterized by significant impoverishment.
Biography
Cyrine Gardes is a sociologist. She is the author of a thesis on working conditions in low-cost companies, defended in 2019 at the EHESS. Since September 2020, her research has focused on work in an epidemic context. She is particularly interested in the experience of highly mobilized workers, such as retail employees (checkout, drive-through, surface, etc.), logistics employees (mass distribution, e-commerce, medicine) and Uberized workers (drivers, couriers).
This article was also published in the journal Les Mondes du Travail
Photo : AFP