“They had a privilege that we did not”: The Intersectional Experiences of Immigrant PSWs in Ontario During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract: Historically, in the healthcare sector, racialized immigrants are concentrated in low-skilled and low-paying jobs like personal support workers (PSWs), with their contributions often being undervalued. They find themselves in these jobs largely because of structural factors such as the colour-coded labour market, proletarianization, and the stratification of care work. The COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial impact on the healthcare system, with healthcare workers (HCWs) facing several unprecedented challenges. Within the health workforce in Canada, PSWs play an integral role, notably in providing care for vulnerable populations such as the elderly and differently-abled people. This study examines the role that racialized PSWs with multiple intersectional identities (e.g. race, gender, and class) play in providing care during COVID-19 pandemic in Southwestern Ontario. Drawing data from in-depth interviews (n=25), the findings demonstrate that racialized immigrant PSWs faced challenges, which included financial concerns due to lockdown and restrictions, concern for immediate and extended family, challenges related to personal safety, and food insecurity. Overall, we conclude that racialized immigrant PSWs faced disproportionate disadvantages in times of crisis because of poor income and systemic inequalities. Therefore, there is a need for policies to better prepare racialized immigrant PSWs for future pandemics. Résumé: Historiquement, dans le secteur des soins de santé, les immigrants racialisés sont concentrés dans des emplois peu qualifiés et mal rémunérés tels que les préposés aux services de soutien personnel et leurs contributions sous-estiment souvent des questions telles que le marché du travail codé par couleur, la prolétarisation et la stratification du travail de soins. La pandémie de COVID-19 a eu un impact considérable sur le système de santé. Les travailleurs de la santé ont été confrontés à plusieurs défis sans précédent. Au sein du personnel de santé au Canada, les préposés aux services de soutien personnel jouent un rôle essentiel, notamment dans la prestation de soins aux populations vulnérables telles que les personnes âgées et les personnes avec des handicaps. Cette étude examine le rôle que jouent les préposés aux services de soutien personnel racialisés ayant des identités multiples et croisées (par exemple, la race, le genre et la classe) dans dans la prestation de soins pendant la pandémie de COVID-19 dans le sud-ouest de l’Ontario. Les données tirées d’entretiens approfondis (n=25) ont montré que les préposés aux services de soutien personnel immigrants racialisés étaient confrontés à des difficultés, notamment des problèmes financiers dus au confinement et aux restrictions, des préoccupations pour la famille immédiate et distant, des problèmes liés à la sécurité personnelle et à l’insécurité alimentaire. Dans l’ensemble, nous concluons que les préposés aux services de soutien personnel immigrants racialisés sont confrontés à des désavantages disproportionnés en temps de crise, en raison de leurs faibles revenus et des inégalités systémiques. Il est donc nécessaire de mettre en place des politiques visant à mieux préparer les préposés aux services de soutien personnel immigrants racialisés aux futures pandémies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".