Romanian Women’s Experiences of Care During the Pandemic in the UK

The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the care and domestic responsibilities of many women during initial and ensuing lockdowns in the UK. As main caregivers, the Romanian women living in London, who participated in my study, relied on their friends and family to cope with this new context, sometimes going as far as seeking support across borders. Their caring arrangements during the pandemic hold valuable lessons on the interdependence required to survive a period of crisis.

Despite calls that women were more likely to engage in domestic work and care during the pandemic than men, state support for these activities failed to materialize in most countries around the world. In the UK, this lack of support strained caring and housework arrangements already stretched to their very ends. While entire business sectors were propped up by government funding, households received little support to manage an increase in care and domestic work.

Lockdown regulations deepened this lack of support. Announced on 23 March 2020, the infamous ‘stay at home’ guidance forbid household mixing. This ‘forced domesticity’ – once destined only for the old, the ill, and the disabled – came with some dated assumptions about care. In the imagination of politicians and policymakers, care could be easily contained within each brick and mortar household. It was only after heartfelt public campaigns that the government partially changed regulations to allow single parents to form childcare bubbles and for one-person households to join others in an effort to tackle loneliness.

For the Romanian women I studied, the restriction of care within one household overlooked the relationships at the heart of life abroad. Having fallen through the cracks of state support, they turned to their social ties to cope with an overwhelming amount of domestic and care work during the pandemic.

Increase in Care and Domestic Work

While many Romanian men continued to work in person in sectors like transport or construction, Romanian women’s employment was more severely affected by the pandemic. Whether in cleaning, retail, or hospitality, the businesses where they worked promptly shut their doors. Women in irregular self-employment and informal work also saw their services unwanted overnight.

This decline in paid work came hand in hand with an increase in care and work inside their homes. When both private and state-funded schools and nurseries closed, childcare was relocated within the household. Co-tenants out of work also stayed home, enhancing the drudgery of cleaning and cooking. Illness needed to be treated within the household as hospital admissions were reserved for serious Covid-19 cases.

Relying on Social Ties Outside the Household

Left to absorb this overwhelming volume of work and care, Romanian women resorted to friends and family to juggle their responsibilities. At times, this involved breaking lockdown rules, as reflected in Camelia’s story.

In her late twenties, Camelia is a mother of three who studies at a local college and works as a hairdresser out of her home. When one of her friends got fined by the police after their neighbors reported visitors, Camelia was reluctant to drop off her children for a playdate. She favored friends nearby who were on good terms with their neighbors. While driving, she kept an eye out for police cars and stored shopping backs in the boot, should she be asked where she was going. Yet, Camelia continued to rely on sporadic childcare opportunities. Having her children at home meant she could not write her assignments or dye hair for some extra cash.

Like Camelia, many of my participants relied on playdates with trusted friends and family to make ends meet. They carefully balanced the risk of being caught breaking pandemic rules and juggling their many responsibilities.

Sometimes, this search for support extended across borders. This much became apparent during my interview with Delia, a mother of three in her early thirties. During the first lockdown, Delia realized that her family could not survive on her husband’s income as an Uber driver. She started to look for a job herself. To help with childcare, Delia brought her elderly mother and father to London when travel restrictions relaxed in the summer of 2020. Reliant on a small state pension and subsistence agriculture in Romania, the couple agreed. When Delia found a job in a local butchery, her parents looked after the children during the summer and the following lockdowns.

The Interdependence Required to Survive the Pandemic

These brief insights into Romanian women’s caring arrangements showcase how interdependence was crucial for surviving the pandemic – as Martin and colleagues wrote earlier this year. At a time when socialization was highly regulated, my participants mobilized their social relations to cope with the surplus of housework and care caused by the pandemic.

However, relying on friends and family came at a cost. Undoubtedly, the mixing of households during the pandemic exposed more families to the virus. But it also led to the breaking of social ties when expectations could not be honored, as was the case for Camelia.

In her eyes, her family members in London were expected to assist her with tasks like chores or childcare, but this support never materialized. Camelia often dwelled on her younger sister offering to help her ‘with the children and the house’ during the first lockdown, but never following up on the promise. For Camelia, it was her sister’s duty as the younger, child-free sibling to assist her in her time of need. When her sister did not follow up on this expectation, the relationship between the two women grew cold.

Reflections on Care

The caring arrangements of Romanian women during the pandemic uncovered the interdependence required to sustain livelihoods during a crisis. Their stories showed that care does not function alongside property lines, unlike its portrayal in the pandemic regulations. Instead, it draws on friends and family ties, and even expands across borders.

However, these caring arrangements should not be simply understood as migrant resourcefulness. For the Romanian women I met, interdependence closely followed kinship and gender norms. In Camelia’s case, it was the younger sister with no children, who should have honored seniority to help her older sister. In Delia’s case, it was her economically inactive parents whose labor could be borrowed to look after children.

It is only by looking at who is expected to care that we can understand the social impact of the pandemic. Rather than a value-free exchange of favors, these caring practices show how gender and age shape higher care burdens. In the aftermath of the pandemic, these relational costs must be considered so that we can shape a more caring and equitable pandemic recovery.

Ana-Maria Cîrstea is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Durham University in the UK. Her PhD research uses an ethnographic approach to investigate the links between work, migration, and belonging from the perspective of Romanian migrants in London. The research on which this blog is based is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

This contribution is published in the context of the series on Family + Mobility by the nccr – on the move, the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) for migration and mobility studies.