‘At First I Got Panicky, Very Panicky’: Nursing, Work and Emotions in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This article falls within an interdisciplinary tradition of studies about work that combines sociology, the history of work and feminist and gender perspective studies. It analyzes the emotional dimension of work carried out by nurses during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as its transformations. It starts from the classic concepts of emotional work and emotional labor coined by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild and discusses them on the basis of these specific work experiences. The analysis is based on 17 in-depth interviews to 2 male nurses and 15 female nurses with different backgrounds in the health sector of Mar del Plata.