Pandemic as a Biographical Turning Point? The Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Biographies of “Essential Workers”

Abstract

This article aims to answer the question of the biographical meaning of the pandemic in the experiences of so-called “essential workers” who performed their duties in the first line of struggle with the consequences of the COVID-19 health crisis. The analysis of workers’ experiences helps us contribute to the ongoing debates on the role of macro-level events in autobiographical storytelling and the discussion on biographical turning points in sociology. The empirical analysis is based on a collection of more than 80 biographical narrative interviews in healthcare, social care, education, and logistics, from which we selected two stories of the pivotal significance of the pandemic crisis for biographical change for analysis. Biographical analysis makes it possible to describe which conditions are conducive to the inclusion of the pandemic in the main biographical story as a turning point.