Intersecting marginalities: International students' struggles for "survival" in COVID‐19. Issue 4 (19th January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Coffey, Julia; Cook, Julia; Farrugia, David; Threadgold, Steven; Burke, Penny Jane
• Is Part Of: Gender work and organization. Volume 28:Issue 4(2021)
• Page Start: 1337
• Page End: 1351
• Publication Date: 2021-01-19
• Subjects: COVID‐19 -- embodiment -- gender -- hospitality work -- international students -- intersectionality -- precarity -- risk; Sex role in the work environment -- Periodicals; Sexual division of labor -- Periodicals; Sex discrimination in employment -- Periodicals; Organizational sociology -- Periodicals; Industries -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 306.361505
• DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12610
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0968-6673

Abstract

Abstract: This article draws on examples from a study of the impacts of coronavirus disease‐2019 (COVID‐19) shutdowns on young hospitality workers in Melbourne and Newcastle, Australia, in May and June of 2020. We explore how existing vulnerabilities related to gender, migrant status, and precarious hospitality work were intensified by the impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic for young women international students in our study. The international students we discuss were exposed to extreme financial precarity, which rendered them vulnerable to other gendered forms of risk and exploitation, including taking part in experimental drug trails and having to take off‐the‐books cleaning work for a "creep." These students described feeling "unwelcome" or "unwanted" through open racial discrimination, or comments from the Prime Minister that international students should "go home." We take an embodied intersectional approach to detail how existing conditions of marginality such as gender, migrant status, economic vulnerability, and precarious conditions of hospitality labor are compounded in the pandemic and exacerbate inequalities, manifesting in increased threats to physical safety and wellbeing.