“Shrine20220906 21486 7d57l7” in “Jennifer Nazareno Transcript”
Race & Inequality in America
Transcript for Student Voices
Jennifer Nazareno and Ashley Gomez
[music]
You’re listening to Student Voices, a podcast featuring student-led interviews of Brown University faculty based on the Race & in America panel discussion series, curated by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America in partnership with the Office of the Provost.
Ashley Gomez: Hi everyone, my name is Ashley Gomez. I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Brown School of Public Health. Today I'm talking to Dr. Jennifer Nazareno, a professor at Brown University, about the importance of care work. Thank you for being here. The first question I have for you is about the importance of care work and domestic work: how is it that you became involved in this sort of community-based participatory research?
Jennifer Nazareno: Hi Ashley, it's so good to talk with you. So yeah, you know, when I started my PhD process or, you know, started with my doctoral studies over at UC San Francisco, I realized that a lot of the work in medical sociology and in public health very much focused on patient care and the wellbeing of patients; the healthcare access that patients have. And it just–I really thought that there was not enough focus, or really any focus, on the labor force that provides care services and direct care work to the patients and particularly, I was very much interested in that part of the work in my research because we don't hear about the women of color, the immigrants that do this type of labor in direct care services, in our healthcare system today. And so that's when I just really thought about wanting to focus my research and my doctoral research on this–and also here at Brown University at the School of Public Health–is to focus on this particular population.
AG: You mentioned immigrants as being a huge part of your work and your research. How is it that immigrant and minoritized entrepreneurship have become a part of your research and what you study?
JN: Yeah, that's a really good question as well. So in the social sciences, there's a lot of work, there's a lot of research, actually, around immigrant and minority women doing care work, domestic care services for predominantly upper class, middle class women, white women and families, and there's been that relationship, and that has been researched in the social sciences. And I really felt, again, that to bring it to public health, to health care–but while I was doing that research, I did find that a lot of these immigrant minority populations found ways in order to–they had to be more entrepreneurial, as they became care workers they realized that there was space to develop small types of businesses in the care work, in the healthcare space, to help them supplement their incomes, and realizing that this was a possibility for them. And people didn't know that–that's not in the research, that hasn't really been explored as much in the social sciences, much less in public health, and so I felt there was this gap in knowledge that I had access to and really had known about just because I did grow up around care workers, my family are care workers and nurses and direct line workers in the healthcare space, where I knew firsthand that they they were becoming more entrepreneurial in these spaces. And it’s this simultaneity of issues around oppressive systems where these women have been marginalized into these kinds of work structures, right, particularly around care work. But at the same time, because there weren't other people doing this kind of work beyond the minoritized and immigrant populations, there was also a space in order to create small businesses around this as well. And so that's where I felt like: I want to take my research there. And so, hence I do have an appointment in the School of Public Health, but also a dual appointment at the Nelson Center of Entrepreneurship, where I do highlight in my classes and in my talks about how immigrants are disproportionately entrepreneurial. Because they've had to be; because they’ve had to be. Because they weren't always welcomed into mainstream labor forces in this country; because their education didn't count all the time when they were applying for jobs, because they went to college or did high school training in their home country and so that didn't count towards when they came here, and not all of them could go back to school, and so being an entrepreneur was a way to find some sense of socioeconomic mobility in this country, and so I speak about that in my work as well as in my research.
AG: And it's so interesting that you speak to that lack of knowledge, the gap in knowledge, regarding this work when such a large proportion of care workers in this country are women of color, are immigrant women of color, and as the aging population continues to increase we're going to see that that that burden is placed on immigrant women of color primarily, right, so very, very timely.
JN: Definitely. It's very timely and also it’s been a long time coming, in the sense that it's been Black women, it's been immigrant minority–minoritized–women that have done this work for decades, right. They’ve been there. We've just made, you know, research and academia just have not really highlighted or centered their narratives or their stories, right? A lot of the research is constantly focused, and a lot of policies focused on patient care, but then they don't look at the other side of the equation. Who is providing the care, and when it's outsourced, when families can't provide care to their loved ones, who is then providing this type of paid labor that is often exploited or underpaid and not recognized as real work? And so it's incumbent upon scholars that are really interested in this type of work to really do the community-based research, partner with those community organizations that have been fighting for these causes, and then bring that to light in our classrooms; bring that to light in the work that we do, and making sure that they no longer are made invisible, because we are aging, and we're aging at faster rates, because of the role of technology, because we are living longer, right, and we can live longer with chronic health conditions. But we have to ask ourselves who gets to live longer, who gets to live with chronic health health conditions, and who's providing the labor force to help certain people age, right? Age longer, and age at home, age in place, right, and it's important to again bring up that there are women, minoritized women, and women of color that have done the majority of this kind of paid labor.
AG: What comes to mind is the phrase “aging with dignity,” right? A lot of people talk about aging with dignity, being able to be in your home. What about these workers and their dignity as human beings, as women, like you said.
JN: Exactly, and I think some newer findings in the work, or something that we're also focused on, is, like, who is able to retire, right? We're finding that care workers, they're 78 years old and they're caring for someone that's 65 years old. And so there's this new inequity that is occurring now, as people are aging: we're all collectively aging, but it's almost like, well, who gets the privilege to age, right? To age in place, age with dignity, and that these immigrant minority workers, we’re finding that they, in the interviews that we've recently done, that they can't even think about retirement, much less think about savings, or think about aging in place. It doesn't even cross their mind, because they are, in some ways, trying to really just survive, right, and so that again speaks to the low wages that they are attaining, it speaks to how much we've devalued their labor. And so that's why it's critical, we’re at a critical moment to really highlight this and, at the same time, focus on, you know, the entrepreneurial businesses that they've developed have really been focused on taking care of some of the most vulnerable populations. A lot of entrepreneurship around this space has really kind of focused on caring for some of the most privileged groups of individuals, right, in terms of home care, and assisted living, and all of that. Like when we see businesses around taking care of some of our most–people that are aging and have to be in institutions, or can't live at home by themselves, but what we're finding, too, is that these immigrant minoritized women, when they do develop businesses, it's because they're taking care of a population that has been left behind, that are not thought of, right, and then they're building, you know, businesses to care for them, and so that's something that again, needs to be highlighted around you know, a two-tiered health care system that we do have in this country, and, I would argue, a two-tiered long-term health care system we have in this country.
AG: All very good points! So where do we go from here, given your work and all of these learnings?
JN: Well, I mean, what's so fascinating is that we're talking and you, Ashley, have written your dissertation and have done this work, too, around, focusing particularly on the role of Latinx women and so I'd love for you to chat–you know, part of the work is mentoring the next scholars to really continue and push these these narratives that haven't been told yet, and really do the research in the community and bridging it with academia, to get the word out, to push for policies, to push for these stories to be told, so I'd love for you to expound on your work.
AG: Well, I do a lot of work focusing on direct care workers that are Latinas primarily in the northeast, especially New York. I found that many women enter entrepreneurship as direct care workers, that is their small business, but a lot of women find that their wages aren't enough, and so they have to supplement their work as direct care workers with some other side hustle, with another–a second or a third job, selling bread, selling clothing, providing other sorts of services in order to make ends meet. And I agree, there's tons of hypocrisy when it comes to providing health care for other people, whilst the people providing the care don't have that sort of access, and so I think that for a lot of folks, when we talk about “aging with dignity,” that word stands out very much so to me because people are treated without dignity, right? They are very proud of the work they do, they know that they're good at it, right, they do it at home, they do it for work, they’re stellar at their jobs, but don't feel that they're being treated as such.
JN: I love that you point that out, I love that you point out that the women that we've interviewed and the populations that you've interviewed, and I've interviewed–so I particularly focused on Filipina women–it's not that they don't want to do this work: they love this work, a lot of them have pride around being a nurse, being a direct care worker. It's not about that, you know; we definitely want to be more nuanced and realizing, no, it's not about whether or not they like the work or that they're not proud of the work, it's that it needs to be recognized as work, as real labor that that healthcare and long-term care systems, they really have, you know, relied on immigrant populations and minoritized populations to do this labor, and it's about time they be recognized and reimbursed and thought of in a dignified way. So, I'm excited to see you graduate; I'm excited to see where you take your work and to see you continue to teach and do research and definitely highlight and underscore and centralize these narratives, so thank you for the work you're doing.
AG: And thank you, Dr. Nazareno, for taking the time to talk with me today. Your mentorship has been outstanding, I couldn't have asked for a better mentor, thank you.
JN: Thank you, Ashley, and you're an amazing student. I'm going to miss you when you graduate, but we'll definitely keep in touch, so take care!
[music]
Student Voices is a feature of the Race & in America digital publication series developed by the Brown University Library. Our theme music is “see the unseen” by Butter. Explore the series at digitalpublications.brown.edu.
We use cookies to analyze our traffic. Please decide if you are willing to accept cookies from our website. You can change this setting anytime in Privacy Settings.