Feminist Studies 46, no. 3. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 639 Carolina Moraes, Juma Santos, and Mariana Prandini Assis “We Are in Quarantine but Caring Does Not Stop”: Mutual Aid as Radical Care in Brazil Feminist scholars have long argued that a “crisis of care” is characteristic of capitalist societies—capitalism has a tendency to jeopardize and destroy the very process and conditions of social reproduction upon which it depends.1 A consequence of capitalism’s systemic orientation toward unlimited accumulation, the crisis of care has expressed itself in different forms throughout history. In the current regime of globalizing financialized capitalism, care work has been externalized onto families and communities along with a drastic downsizing of public provisions. For those who can afford it, all kinds of care activities are available as commodities to be purchased in the market. Those unable to pay for care need to find time and energy to do it for themselves and their dependents. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the deadly consequences of the accumulated capitalist erosion of care into sharp relief. Working mothers , unable to juggle work, children, and household chores, have left their jobs to respond to the increased need for care work at home.2 Underfundedhealthcaresystemshavecollapsedinthefaceofanunprecedented 1. Nancy Fraser, “Contradictions of Capital and Care,” New Left Review 100 (2016): 99–117. 2. EJ Dickson, “Coronavirus Is Killing the Working Mother,” Rolling Stone, July 3, 2020, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/workingmotherhood -covid-19-coronavirus-1023609. 640 Carolina Moraes, Juma Santos, and Mariana Prandini Assis demand.3 Frontline and low-wage essential care workers, particularly those in the gig economy, endure overexploitation and burnout even in the cases where they are able to keep their jobs.4 These are just a few examples of how the current public health crisis further exposes the contradictions of care and capital. While fundamental, these examples nonetheless speak to dimensions of care that are often neglected, but not altogether ignored by mainstream discourse and policy. There are, however, populations whose care work and needs remain unacknowledged, both in “normal” and exceptional times. As states across the world adopt lockdown and social distancing measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus, entire sectors of the informal economy are left with no work and no social protection. Street sex workers are one of them. Worldwide, sex workers face barriers to access financial relief for immediate needs, to benefit from recovery plans, or to enjoy temporary forms of labor protection devised to respond to the socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic.5 Particularly those living in the so-called red light areas not only are incapable of following social distancing and other public health orders, but they are also targeted with greater stigmatization and other forms of discrimination.6 Stigmatization of sex work through its association with the spread of infectious disease is not a new phenomenon, but it finds renewed severity in studies that purportedly seek to investigate the potential impact of closing red light areas in response to COVID-19.7 3. Vicente Navarro, “The Consequences of Neoliberalism in the Current Pandemic ,” International Journal of Health Services 50, no. 3 (2020): 271–75. 4. Alexandra Mateescu, “Carework under Crisis: COVID-19 is Exacerbating the ‘Care Crisis’ in Society,” Data & Society, April 15, 2020, https://points.dataso ciety.net/carework-under-crisis-6b8521fda056. 5. Priyanka Tripathi and Chhandita Das, “Social Distancing and Sex Workers in India,” Economic and Political Weekly 55, no. 31 (2020): 21–24; International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe, “Policy Demands: The Impact of Covid-19 on Sex Workers in Europe and Central Asia and Recommendations for Policy Makers,” 2020, https://www.sexworkeurope.org/sites/default/files/userfiles/files /Policy_brief_ICRSE_COVID19.pdf (accessed on September 20, 2020). 6. Tripathi and Das, “Social Distancing and Sex Workers in India,” 21–24. 7. Abhishek Pandey, Sudhakar V. Nuti, Pratha Sah, Chad Wells, Alison P. Galvani , and Jeffrey P. Townsend, “The Effect of Extended Closure of RedLight Areas on COVID-19 Transmission in India,” Physics and Society (2020), https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.10488. Carolina Moraes, Juma Santos, and Mariana Prandini Assis 641 Marginalized, stigmatized, and often denied their full citizenship status, street sex...
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