“We Lost a Lot During COVID”: Migrant Women’s Reflections on Precarity, Work and COVID-19 in Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract

The restrictions and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have amplified and intensified pre-existing inequalities on a global scale. In South Africa, as a result of the continuing legacies of apartheid, the healthcare and social sectors are frequently stretched and overburdened. Consequently, although care services are provided at public and private levels, much care work is unregulated and undertaken in an informal care economy by voluntary workers, community level healthcare workers, family and domestic workers. The women who undertake this labour are often the most marginalised with regard to access to resources and are likely Black women who are also poor. In addition, the context of increasing economic migration to South Africa from other parts of the continent is important for shaping the informal care economy and the precarious nature of the work. In this research brief, we analyse interviews that formed part of a larger South African and cross-national study on people’s resource constraints and strategies for living with HIV during COVID times. In our current reading of these data, we are interested in women’s experiences of informal work in South Africa and the ways in which these experiences have been shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. We offer brief reflections on informal, precarious work undertaken by migrant women in South Africa.