Looking Through the Lens of "Essential Workers"

Autor(en)

Ayse Caglar

Abstrakt

This article explores the contradictions the category of “essential workers” entails, especially in conjunction with the governance of their mobility, citizenship, and the dilemmas thereof. I concentrate on the temporary/seasonal migrant workers as the epitome of essential workers’ paradoxical assemblage of rights and value to scrutinize both labor and its production and reproduction in contemporary capitalism. The essential workers were not only caught between mobility and immobility but also between visibility and invisibility vis-à-vis their activity as labor and, outside of it, between worthlessness and being of value. Their governance and location in society and economy reveal the structural dilemmas of capital and labor, as well as social reproduction in contemporary capitalism.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie

Journal

Dialectical Anthropology

Band

48

Seiten

367-382

Anzahl der Seiten

16

ISSN

1573-0786

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-024-09730-2

Publikationsdatum

09-2024

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

504001 Allgemeine Soziologie, 504017 Kulturanthropologie, 504021 Migrationsforschung, 504018 Kultursoziologie

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Anthropology, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous), Sociology and Political Science

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/9c592226-79c3-4e8e-8ae0-2b84b33ab8f5