Female immigration and the ambivalence of dirty care work: Caribbean nurses in imperial Britain
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Standard
Female immigration and the ambivalence of dirty care work : Caribbean nurses in imperial Britain. / Olwig, Karen Fog.
In: Ethnography, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2018, p. 44-62.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Female immigration and the ambivalence of dirty care work
T2 - Caribbean nurses in imperial Britain
AU - Olwig, Karen Fog
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - It is a generally accepted view that immigrants, especially women, often are relegated to performing the denigrated dirty care work that the local population refuses to do. Studies of Caribbean women who trained and worked as nurses in the post-Second World War British hospitals thus have emphasized that they were especially saddled with tasks involving unclean substances reflective of their racialized, low-status position as immigrants in Britain. Drawing on Bakhtin’s analysis of dirt, this article argues that the categorization of immigrants’ work as particularly dirty refers not only to their position as marginalized, discriminated outsiders. It also represents both a tacit recognition of their essential contribution to the regeneration of the receiving society and an attempt to control the transgressive potential inherent in this contribution by debasing their work. Immigrants therefore are branded as doing dirty work, because they represent a transformative force that is both needed and feared.
AB - It is a generally accepted view that immigrants, especially women, often are relegated to performing the denigrated dirty care work that the local population refuses to do. Studies of Caribbean women who trained and worked as nurses in the post-Second World War British hospitals thus have emphasized that they were especially saddled with tasks involving unclean substances reflective of their racialized, low-status position as immigrants in Britain. Drawing on Bakhtin’s analysis of dirt, this article argues that the categorization of immigrants’ work as particularly dirty refers not only to their position as marginalized, discriminated outsiders. It also represents both a tacit recognition of their essential contribution to the regeneration of the receiving society and an attempt to control the transgressive potential inherent in this contribution by debasing their work. Immigrants therefore are branded as doing dirty work, because they represent a transformative force that is both needed and feared.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - migration
KW - nursing
KW - dirt
KW - excretions
KW - hierarchy
KW - Caribbean
KW - neo-colonialism
KW - Britain
KW - race
KW - gender
U2 - 10.1177/1466138117697744
DO - 10.1177/1466138117697744
M3 - Journal article
VL - 19
SP - 44
EP - 62
JO - Ethnography
JF - Ethnography
SN - 1466-1381
IS - 1
ER -
ID: 174495438