Finding dignity in dirty work: The constraints and rewards of low-wage home care labour

Abstract

The ageing of the population in the US and elsewhere raises important questions about who will provide long-term care for elderly and disabled people. Current projections indicate that home care workers - most of whom are unskilled, untrained and underpaid - will increasingly absorb responsibility for care. While research to date confirms the demanding aspects of the work and the need for improved working conditions, little is known about how home care workers themselves experience and negotiate their labour on a daily basis. This paper attempts to address this gap by examining how home care workers assign meaning to their 'dirty work'. Qualitative interviews suggest that home care workers have a conflicted, often contradictory, relationship to their labour. Workers identify constraints that compromise their ability to do a good job or to experience their work as meaningful, but they also report several rewards that come from caring for dependent adults. I suggest workers draw dignity from these rewards, especially workers who enter home care after fleeing an alienating service job, within or outside the healthcare industry. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd/Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing.