Care Economies in Context; Gender, Migration, & The Work of Care

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Gendered Labor Continuum: Immigrant Mothers Confronting Uncertainty and Pandemic Constraints

Journal article by Daniela Ugarte Villalobos and Pelin Gul draws on interviews with Venezuelan mothers in New York City to reveal the interplay between uncertain migratory statuses, labor market struggles, the traditional gendered division of household labor, and resilience strategies.

In their article for Genealogy, Gendered Labor Continuum: Immigrant Mothers Confronting Uncertainty and Pandemic Constraints, Daniela Ugarte Villalobos and Pelin Gul introduce the term “gendered labor continuum”, referring to women’s labor as a continuum of their labor in the public and private spaces where their paid and unpaid labor are intertwined and connected. Drawing from 18 semi-structured interviews with Venezuelan mothers residing in NYC, this study explored how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced this continuum of the forms of labor faced by Venezuelan immigrant mothers.

Daniela Ugarte Villalobos and Pelin Gul are both Ph.D. students in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto.

Citation

Ugarte Villalobos, D.; Gul, P. Gendered Labor Continuum: Immigrant Mothers Confronting Uncertainty and Pandemic Constraints. Genealogy 2024, 8, 117. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8030117

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Abstract

The literature on migration shows that legal status in receiving countries shapes immigrant experiences. While these studies effectively address the impact of precarious legal statuses on immigrant experiences, they often examine women’s labor in public and private spheres separately. Yet, women’s lives have long involved a continuum of paid and unpaid labor. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this continuum into sharp focus by spotlighting the influence of home and work dynamics. This study explores how immigrant women’s labor in both public and private spheres are interconnected. Drawing on 18 initial interviews with Venezuelan mothers in NYC from 2020, and 13 follow-up interviews in 2024, we examine the impacts of structural forces on these women’s labor arrangements and their strategies to navigate these impacts during and after the pandemic. Our findings reveal that while pandemic restrictions disrupted traditional labor market dynamics, they simultaneously intensified women’s engagement in domestic roles. Despite this, the mothers exercised agency by exiting the labor market and engaging in patriarchal bargaining at home. Post-pandemic, they lost access to the coping strategy, and their improved legal status did little to alleviate their labor struggles. This study highlights the significance of a “gendered labor continuum” in contexts that lack institutional support and undervalue immigrant women’s labor.

Daniela Ugarte Villalobos and Pelin Gul

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