“We Will Handle It Ourselves”: The Micropolitics of Resistance in Low-Wage Care Work

Abstract

This article examines the micropolitics of resistance among low-wage care workers in a gendered organization. Focusing on the dynamics of workers’ daily efforts to endure organizational structure, I illustrate not only the ways in which certified nursing assistants (CNAs) perform routine resistance but also the significance of gendered group norms for rule-breaking. Drawing on 10 months of observations and 30 interviews in a nursing home, findings illustrate two factors fundamentally linked to the gendered character of the work as particularly salient for peer support of others’ rule-breaking: perceptions of resident safety and the expectation of coworker reciprocity. The article considers both the implications of these practices for daily work experience and the extent to which our understanding of routine resistance is complicated by the possibility that the same features of work that form the backbone of workplace inequality are those that shape resistance and worker solidarity.