Everyday racism and the denial of migrant African women’s good caring in aged care work

There is, in the global north, a “care crisis,” a shortfall in the capacity to provide care for an aging population. Migrant care workers have been positioned as a solution to this crisis, but this positioning sits in tension with research highlighting the widespread racism that questions or denies the skills and commitment of migrant care workers. This study draws on the experiences of 30 migrant African women working in the Australian aged care sector to interrogate the implications of this tension. The authors describe how everyday racism perpetrated by clients and colleagues denied the possibility that migrant African women carers were able or welcome to undertake “good caring.” Applying Tronto's conceptualization of caring as relational, the authors argue that everyday racism symbolically denies African migrant women's participation in key phases of the caring process: “caring about,” “caregiving,” and “care-receiving.” Everyday racism thus rejects migrant African women's care work at the individual level and reinforces care as a set of practices and dispositions that are unavailable to them.