Labour and the pandemic

Abstract

In this expository essay, we argue that the pandemic has brought out in sharp relief certain particulars about current conditions of work and employment that often remain substratal. Using work situations of individuals as our analytical lens, we study the differences in Covid experiences of working populations in the Global North and the Global South. For this study, we interrogate the familiar notions of ‘work’ and ‘employment’. Over the past few decades, there has been an increasing disjuncture between these two categories, with certain fundamental and wide-ranging changes taking place in the nature of work and relations of employment. We draw from critical studies on these issues to develop our idea of work situation. This concept is predicated on the nature of work performed, the circumstance under which work is performed, and the position that a working individual occupies within the economic processes of production and distribution. We posit that these factors shape the conditions of precarity in livelihood conditions and chances of disease exposure that we observe during the pandemic. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Rajib Bhattacharyya, Ananya Ghosh Dastidar and Soumyen Sikdar;individual chapters, the contributors.