Vulnerable bodies and invisible work: The Covid-19 pandemic and social reproduction
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Author | Ellen Gordon-Bouvier |
| DOI | 10.1177/13582291211031371 |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
2021, Vol. 21(3) 212 –229
Article
Vulnerable bodies and
invisible work: The
Covid-19 pandemic and
social reproduction
Ellen Gordon-Bouvier
Abstract
The restrained state has always sought to devalue socially reproductive work, often
consigning it to the private family unit, where it is viewed as a natural part of female
relational roles. This marginalisation of social reproduction adversely affects those
performing it and reduces their resilience to vulnerability. The pandemic has largely
shattered the liberal illusions of autonomous personhood and state restraint. The reality
of our universal embodied vulnerability has now become impossible to ignore, and
society’s reliance on socially reproductive work has therefore been pushed into public
view. However, the pandemic has also exacerbated harms and pressures for those
performing paid and unpaid social reproduction, creating a crisis that demands an urgent
state response. As it is argued in this paper, the UK response to date has been inade-
quate, illustrating an unwillingness to abandon familiar principles of liberal individualism.
However, the pandemic has also created a climate of exceptionality, which has prompted
even the most neoliberal of states to consider measures that in the past would have been
dismissed. In this paper, it is imagined how the state can use this opportunity to become
more responsive and improve the resilience of social reproduction workers, both inside
and outside the home.
Keywords
Vulnerability, social reproduction, caregiving, gender equality, Covid-19 pandemic
School of Law, Oxford Brookes University, UK
Corresponding author:
Ellen Gordon-Bouvier, School of Law, Oxford Brookes University , Headington Road, Oxford
OX3 0BP, UK.
Email: e.gordon-bouvier@brookes.ac.uk
International Journalof
Discrimination and theLaw
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DOI: 10.1177/13582291211031371
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Gordon-Bouvier 213
Introduction
Seldom has an event so clearly illustrated the core tenets of Martha Fineman’s vulner-
ability theory as the global Covid-19 pandemic has – that, as embodied beings, we share
a constant and inescapable vulnerability, our fragile bodies living with ‘the ever-present
possibility of harm and injury’ (Fineman, 2008, p. 9). Furthermore, our corporeal vul-
nerability means that we are ‘dependent upon, and embedded within, social relationships
and institutions throughout the life course’ (Fin eman, 2017, p. 134). The relentless,
indiscriminate spread of the virus across the globe and the human failure to defeat or
control it has starkly illustrated our universal helplessness in the face of forces of nature
that we cannot fully understand, let alone hope to conquer.
In this paper, I critically analyse the UK’s response to the pandemic through a
vulnerability lens. In particular, I examine how the pandemic has affected the visibility
and status of socially reproductive work, as well as the impact on those who perform it.
Social reproduction, defined as ‘the maintenance of life on a daily basis and intergener-
ationally’ (Laslett and Brenner, 1989, pp. 382–383), includes a wide range of labour,
including supporting and nurturing those who undertake paid work, caring for infant,
elderly, sick, and disabled populations (either paid or unpaid), food preparation, and
domestic work in the home. Across the globe, women undertake substa ntially more
social reproduction than men, both on a paid and unpaid basis (Rai et al., 2014). The
reality of the embodied, vulnerable, and episodically dependent human condition, as
described above, means that society could not function without this work. Yet, the state
consistently devalues social reproduction, denying its essential nature and society’s
reliance upon it. Where it is performed in the context of the private family unit, social
reproduction becomes configured as a gendered endeavour – an expectation of the
female relational role within the private family unit and lacking any value or recognition
beyond this (Fudge, 2005). Even where the worker receives remuneration, caregiving
and other social reproduction is regarded as unskilled labour, attracting low pay and
often poor or precarious conditions (see Hayes, 2017). Instead, the state organises its
institutions, including law, around an artificial image of autonomous liberal personhood,
whereby the individual is imagined as rational, self-interested, and economically self-
sufficient (Fineman, 2008; Grear, 2013).
I argue in this paper that the pandemic has sha ttered the illusion of autonomous
individualism that underlies the liberal state’s actions. Socially reproductive labour and
society’s undeniable reliance on it have come into public view after being concealed for
so long. In this sense, an image of an embodied ‘vulnerable subject’ (Fineman, 2010, p.
2) has been forced to the forefront of the public imagination, also revealing the state’s
ultimate control (and the individual’s corresponding lack of control) over the production
of resilience against vulnerability. However, while this illumination of universal vulner-
ability has been useful in demonstrating the inadequacies in the liberal theoretical
approach that has so long dominated, the global crisis has also had disproportionate
adverse effects on those who undertake socially reproductive work. As I argue, it has
always been the case that the state’s devaluation and neglect of social reproduction has
caused various economic, physical, and emotional harms to those undertaking the work
(Gordon-Bouvier, 2019b; Rai et al., 2014). However, the pandemic has had a notably
2International Journal of Discrimination and the Law XX(X)
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