The impact of Covid-19 crisis on the political dynamics of the home care sector: national visibility and new forms of activism in France.

The Covid 19 pandemic shed light on home care assistants in France. Usually invisible in the public sphere, this feminine occupation gained some kind of recognition because of their essential role in the care of elderly people throughout the sanitary crisis, especially during the lock-downs. This crisis favoured the emergence of a new workers’ collective called La force invisible des aides à domicile, which organized on Facebook mostly. Later on, a left-wing deputy, François Ruffin, who had already show interest in low-qualified feminine jobs, co-directed a documentary film on his attempt to pass a law in the national assembly to improve working conditions for caring occupations. The film features female caring workers as les femmes du lien et du soin. The growing visibility of François Ruffin on this topic participated in politicizing this public issue. The collective of the invisible force of home care assistants then split in two between those who wanted to remain a-political and those who wanted to work with François Ruffin and put forward political revendications. Both still exist in 2024. During this time, traditional trade unions, which are quite weak in this sector but nevertheless present, remained quite silent or unheard even if they were working on a national level in the negotiations around the reform of one collective agreement and on the local level on the day-to-day support of home care assistants. From today’s point of view, the political landscape of the home care sector has changed since 2020 and led to the politicization of many home care assistants. Based on the analysis of the activities of national and local representatives, of trade unions and of the new workers’ collectives, this paper aims at better understanding the effects of the Covid 19 crisis on the political and activist dynamics in the home care sector in France. The study of press and social media and in-depth interviews with trade union representatives and home care assistants allow us to analyse both the public visibility of these issues during the pandemic crisis and the effects it had on the actors concerned up to this day.