Race, gender and class under COVID-19: narratives of care, caring and carers

It has been well documented that the COVID-19 pandemic and policy responses in the UK had discriminatory effects on racially minoritised communities, older people and carers. While separate studies have investigated outcomes for these groups, few have brought them together. This article shares findings from a qualitative study undertaken during the pandemic that investigated impacts on the everyday lives of three racially minoritised groups in the UK: older people and unpaid and paid carers for adults. Situating the data in a wider context and viewed through a feminist lens of everyday political economy, we argue that the pandemic both reflected ongoing crises in and of care and intensified life-making practices of social reproduction. As revealed through narratives of everyday care experiences at the ‘peak’ moment of the pandemic, the crisis was characterised by depletion through care and caring, reinforcing and deepening existing racialised, gendered and class-based hierarchies of inequality.