Paper short abstract:

At University of Bayreuth, the German state responded to the Covid-19 Pandemic by establishing rigid boundaries between caregivers and care-receivers, constructing its diverse affiliates as either one - in conflict with the empirical realities of multiple overlapping care roles and responsibilites.

Paper long abstract:

The onset of the Covid-19 has fundamentally changed everyday university life: The sudden switch to working from home while caring for children, the ad-hoc adoption of digital teaching/learning, and the restriction of personal contact between fellow students and colleagues are just some aspects of the profound transformation university affiliates of diverse status groups had to deal with. This transformation is studied in the mixed-methods research project CovCare@UBT at one particular German university, the University of Bayreuth (UBT).

For many participants, this time is remembered as one of deep crisis, exhaustion, and overwhelm, which is the result of a collapse of existing practices and regimes of care. With the state relegating care (back) to the nuclear family and shutting down its institutions of childcare for months, upholding wage work, academic qualification, childcare and schooling became an almost unattainable tightrope walk.

The state in its manifestation of the UBT administration responded to the pandemic by un/doing boundaries between caregivers and care-receivers, and assigning roles of giving or receiving care to its affiliates. This policy response was at times corresponding to, at times troubling the multiple care responsibilities and networks my respondents were embedded in, leading to a spectrum of outcomes that complicate the dominant notion of the crisis as a “burning glass” for inequalities. Departing from empirical examples, this paper seeks to carefully analyse who was drawn back by the sudden change of care, who got through the crisis fairly well – and who even benefitted from new modes of caring.