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Contribution short abstract

Based on ethnographic engagement in Waltham Cross and neighbouring boroughs in London, the paper examines how spirituality becomes a key resource through which African domiciliary carers make sense of insecurity, waiting, and moral strain within a deeply polarised political climate in the UK.

Contribution long abstract

This paper explores how African domiciliary care workers in the UK navigate everyday life within a deeply polarised political climate. Ongoing public debates around immigration, welfare, and the future of social care, shaped by competing political imaginaries associated with Labour, Conservative, and Reform discourses, have rendered migrant presence increasingly uncertain. For care workers whose right to remain is continually discussed but rarely centred, political instability becomes an intimate condition of daily life.

Based on ethnographic engagement in Waltham Cross and neighbouring boroughs in London, the paper examines how spirituality becomes a key resource through which carers make sense of insecurity, waiting, and moral strain. Practices such as prayer, faith talk, and trust in divine timing feature prominently in participants' interpretations of employment precarity, visa uncertainty, and the emotional demands of care work.

Rather than approaching spirituality solely as resistance or withdrawal, the paper attends to its ambivalence. Faith emerges both as a means of sustaining resilience and as a mode of acceptance that reframes limited agency within a larger moral horizon. In this sense, spirituality does not stand outside politics but is lived within it, shaping how uncertainty is endured and narrated.

Keywords: Spirituality; migrant care work; political polarisation; precarity; UK social care