Disabling care: migrant caregivers and embodiment in Israel/Palestine

Keywords: Israel/Palestine, migration, social reproduction, settler colonialism, disability
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 13

Abstract

This presentation develops a materialist disability analysis of post-Soviet migrant caregivers’ experiences in Palestine/Israel. Using discourse analysis of caregivers’ comments on the social media page of a workers’ rights organization, this talk examines how migrant labor programs reconfigure the spatialization of dis/ability by confining legally precarious workers in the homes where they live and work. Focusing on caregivers' references to their own bodies, I argue that Israel's intensifying governance of migrant workers' mobility has serious effects on caregivers' nervous systems; conversely, caregivers invoke their embodied experiences to revalorize their labor and justify their claims to improved working conditions.