“Nobody wants to be a dead hero”: Coping with precarity at the frontlines of the Brazilian and Mexican pandemic response

Abstract

This study analyzes how adverse working conditions shape frontline workers' behavioral and cognitive coping mechanisms. It builds on the idea of frontline work as a precarious profession and explores how workers deal with associated challenges. Specifically, evidence is provided for factors associated with alienative commitment among frontline workers. We do so against the background of the 2020–2021 Mexican and Brazilian pandemic response by health workers, social workers, and police officers. Findings from our qualitative analysis show that they feel abandoned, vulnerable, and left to deal with the risks of the pandemic by themselves. In response, they tend to cognitively disconnect from their work and prioritize their own job survival. We contribute to the literature by showing how institutional factors over which street-level bureaucrats have little control, such as resource scarcity, lack of job security and managerial support, and low trust by citizen-clients, are fertile conditions for these coping patterns.