Longing for a House in Ghana

Ghanaians’ Responses to the Dignity Threats of Elder Care Work in the United States

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7769299
AutoresC Coe (0000-0003-2556-9781, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, autor correspondente)
Ano2016
Volume44
Fascículo3
Páginas352-374
Data de publicação2016-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEthos (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0091-2131 • E-ISSN: 1548-1352
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/etho.12122
OpenAlexW2517250877
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas40

Home health care is a growing occupation in the United States which calls for significant emotional labor. On the basis of interviews and participant observation with home health workers from Ghana, this article argues that home health work is different from other kinds of emotional labor in that living and working in the client's house are central to the conditions of work and the dignity assaults of workers’ experience. Among their strategies for responding to these dignity threats is to long for a house and to direct their energy toward an alternative social field through house construction “at home” in Ghana. Thus, the dignity threats experienced by immigrant home health workers raise concerns about the occupation's ability to retain workers as well as immigrants’ sense of worth and belonging in the United States

Dignity · Economic growth · Economics · Emotional labor · Health care · Immigration · Political science · Sociology · Work (physics) · Employment and Welfare Studies · Geriatric Care and Nursing Homes · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Law · Medicine · Nursing · Psychology · Social Psychology