Paper short abstract:

The paper identifies how ill-health emerges from embodied experiences of boundary crossing between workforce inclusion and exclusion in South Africa, intensified by successive crises of Covid-19, food price hikes, localized drought and violent unrest.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores ill-health arising from boundary crossing between workforce inclusion and exclusion. It focuses on food system workers in South Africa. In this sector, many kinds of work involve only delimited and partial inclusion, from seasonal picking to farm work interrupted by repetitive injuries, to migrant street vendors working under the threat of government reprisal. Moreover, in the last three years the boundaries of workforce inclusion have been intensified and even re-drawn by successive crises: the near collapse of food supply chains and escalating hunger caused by government regulations to control Covid-19; food and fuel price hikes; local drought; and the July 2021 ‘unrest’ – a period of widespread violence and looting of shops, causing the death of over 300 people and damage to thousands of shops and businesses.

The paper draws on research conducted with a team of community researchers in 2022. It explores how mental and physical ill-health emerge from the embodied experiences of boundary crossing between fluid states of inclusion and exclusion, intensified by these recent social ruptures. It reflects on how the social infrastructures mobilised to alleviate hunger may also help to relieve the mental and physical strain of precarious work.