Pandemics and inequalities in a comparative perspective

• Grant number: 23/07959-3
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - International
• Start date: October 16, 2023
• End date: December 15, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Nadya Araujo Guimarães
• Grantee: Nadya Araujo Guimarães
• Visiting researcher: Helena Sumiko Hirata
• Visiting researcher institution: Centre de Recherches Sociologiques et Politiques de Paris (CRESPPA), France
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The pandemic has shown how everyone is equally vulnerable to the coronavirus, and how that kind of equality in vulnerability coexists with differences according to class, gender and race. Research in Brazil and other countries has shown that the globalization of the coronavirus has hit more strongly the poor, black and female people. Care work, professionally carried out by women, black, and from lower classes, is paradigmatic of this inequality in the pandemic. This research aims to analyze how social inequalities are addressed within two different national contexts, France and Brazil, to deepen our hypotheses in the comparative project "Who cares? Rebuilding care in a post-pandemic world" (2022-2025), a study led by the host researcher and supported by the T-AP/ FAPESP International Consortium (Proc.2021/07888-3) and CNPq/Edital Universal (421754/2021-4). I will focus on two main aspects: 1) the differences and similarities in the practices of caregivers (in institutions and in households) in France and Brazil; 2) the different public policies put into place by the governments to face the pandemic in these two countries. Qualitative research with caregivers both in institutions and in households, in France and Brazil, will allow to compare the modalities of coping with the new health and social crisis in both countries, and the subjective and collective experiences acquired in this new situation. This comparative point of view is necessary to examine what can be done during and post-pandemic. Thus, my research aims to analyze how this new approach on care, as a disposition and practice related to all and not just to specific groups, impacted the practices of care providers as well as care recipients. (AU)