Coloniality and contagion: COVID-19 and the disposability of women of color in feminized labor sectors.

Abstract

Grounded in the historical conditions of epidemics intertwined with state power, we examine the factors that contribute to women of color's high proximity to contagion. We build on significant contributions to scholarship on the racial and sexual politics of work and the colonial history of contagion to argue that colonialism is key in the state's weaponization of illness against entire populations. This is crucial to decipher how women of color in feminized labor sectors, in our case, cleaning services and nursing, confront death during the COVID-19 pandemic. This transforms readers' understanding of governmentality within public health crizes and the roles of colonial state institutions in administering death in raced, gendered, and classed ways. We conclude that future studies focused on pandemics, labor, race, and gender must account for the ways in which colonialism positions feminized workers as fungible in structures of response to mass crizes.