Building caring cities: From disaster relief to community-based infrastructure for unauthorized and low-paid immigrant workers

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper asks “who cares” in the precarious city when the state fails. In Los Angeles, one of the largest immigrant-based economies in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the extreme vulnerability of low-paid immigrant workers who were unable to do paid work during government-mandated shutdown periods. Unauthorized workers and immigrants in mixed-status households, who are the focus of our study, faced additional challenges, contending with hunger, eviction, and lack of access to essential medicine and public health care due to their exclusion from federal relief assistance. The role of civil society organizations in addressing the gaps and fissures of the neoliberal state is heavily criticized, we argue that scholars—as well as policymakers—need to pay closer attention to exactly how organizational actors are rebuilding state-society relations guided by principles of relational care, strategic responsiveness, and infrastructural efficacy, rather than neglect, incompetence, and criminality. As we face a future of ongoing epidemiological and ecological crises, our public institutions have much to learn from immigrant workers and social justice organizations that are working in concert to build caring cities in precarious and carceral times.