Pandemic Communities of Fate and Care Penalties Among Community Outreach Workers in California's Central Valley
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3030856 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Meredith Van Natta (0000-0001-9749-7815, Department of Sociology University of California – Merced Merced California USA, corresponding author), Andrés A Arias (0000-0002-9478-8403, University of California, Merced), Andrés Arias (Department of Sociology University of California – Merced Merced California USA), Maria Andrea Escobar (Department of Sociology & Anthropology Albright College Reading Pennsylvania USA), María De Los Ángeles Cortés Escobar (0000-0003-1662-6182, Albright College) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | e70080-e70080 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociology of Health & Illness (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0141-9889 • E-ISSN: 1467-9566 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9566.70080 |
| PMID | 40884022 |
| OpenAlex | W4413840561 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 49 |
Existing scholarship has examined community outreach workers' vital role as an essential, effective public health workforce in underserved communities. Less attention has been paid to how such workers have experienced this rhetorically praised yet materially undervalued labour in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on interviews with 43 community outreach workers who facilitated health and well-being services for immigrant communities in California's Central Valley, we find that the pandemic created a unique 'community of fate' among community outreach workers in the region. This community of fate, in turn, exacerbated an existing care penalty rooted in the gendered, racialised and legally stratified nature of their labour. Taking both a micro- and macro-level analytical approach, we argue that the symbolic value of this 'essential' labour-often expressed in terms of a calling, vocation or destiny-intensified its material devaluation despite the importance of their work in mitigating pandemic harms
Context (archaeology · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Health care · Outreach · Pandemic · Political science · Public relations · Scholarship · Sociology · Workforce · Employment and Welfare Studies · Global Health Workforce Issues · Law · Medicine · Migration, Health and Trauma
Servants of Globalization
Covid-19 Pandemic
Community Health Workers and Covid-19 — Addressing Social Determinants of Health in Times of Crisis and Beyond
Community health workers
Community Health Workers as Puentes/Bridges to Increase Covid-19 Health Equity in Latinx Communities of the Southwest U.S
Domestica
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Economy and Society
Professionalization as a “Double-Edged Sword”
Addressing Health Disparities in the Rural United States
Laboring With the Heart
Essential Workers and Care Penalties in the United States
Covid-19 and feminism in the Global South
Essential, Disposable, and Excluded
Reimagining value
Does volunteer community health work empower women? Evidence from Ethiopia’s Women’s Development Army
Health Equity and the Allocation of Covid-19 Provider Relief Funds
Community Health Workers
The Cost of Caring
The Color of Covid-19
Varieties of second modernity
Conceptualizing the Foundation of Inequalities in Care Work
Working around safety net exclusions during the Covid-19 pandemic
Social extremity, communities of fate, and the sociology of Sars
Pandemic Communities of Fate and Care Penalties Among Community Outreach Workers in California's Central Valley
It Cuts Both Ways
Volunteers Are Not Paid Because They Are Priceless
Wages of Virtue
It's Like a Family
Emerging Theories of Care Work
Global health risks and cosmopolitisation
The business of care
From Servitude to Service Work
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |