Advocating for Survival: Domestic Workers in the Necropolitical Regime of the Pandemic

Abstract During the COVID-19 pandemic, advocating for basic protections has become a matter of survival for domestic workers. With the onset of COVID-19, this largely female and immigrant workforce was expected to take on dangerous care duties with little protection against disease and death. We apply a necropolitical feminist analysis to expose the underlying logic of the deadly (virus) regime and to highlight how the movement counteracted that logic in the United States. Domestic worker organizations enacted a feminist model of collective care while also pushing for important changes within regulations designed to protect the economy above workers’ lives. The organizations representing domestic workers advanced their agendas of worker and immigrant rights, and the very value of care itself, while adapting their messaging to the prevailing rhetoric of limited relief measures in three stages, organized around three main narratives, centered on (essential) workers’ rights, public health, and a “healthy economy.”