Paper short abstract:

How can we visually communicate the chronic pain generated by the physical labor of care? How do we link bodily injury to care workers’ narratives about disenfranchisement? This paper explores the possibilities by drawing on the literature on pain’s representation and other films about care work.

Paper long abstract:

My ethnographic research on African immigrant elder care workers in the United States highlighted the labor of care as I met women (and some men) whose care work had disabled them, particularly in causing chronic pain from lifting and moving their patients. Their narratives of coping with chronic pain in their knees and backs were supported by statistical evidence showing the high rate of workplace injury among care workers. In their eyes, their bodily injuries both hindered them and represented more symbolic injuries, such as whether their care labor resulted in their overall wellbeing. For instance, Mariam, who walked unsteadily and with a limp, told me that she had come to the United States as a “young woman full of life” after working as a nurse in Guinea and Sierra Leone. Now, after nineteen years of working in home care and at the age of sixty-four, her body was “broken in two.” As I began to make a film about a particular care worker, whose health problems threatened her continued employment in this strenuous occupation, I thought about how to represent her physical labor visually. Quite quickly, the idea of focusing on her hands came to me. However, my audience found these images opaque. Narrative seemed to be the best, even if imperfect, method for communicating this point. Using the literature on the representation of pain, and examining other films about care workers, this paper considers how we might communicate chronic pain and the labor of care visually.