Auswirkungen der Covid-19 Krise auf soziale Ungleichheiten und das Zusammenleben in drei paraguayischen Grenzstädten
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a crisis of global dimensions and asymmetric effects. Stay-athome mandates and mobility restrictions, both necessary measures to prevent the spread of the virus, have translated into significant socioeconomic costs that affected people who occupy disparate positions in the social scale differently. And while states have intervened with various measures to mitigate the effects that the restrictions have brought with them, not all countries have the right tools or necessary budget to protect their economies and citizens from the backlash that closures – of borders, schools, industries, shops, among others – have generated. In other words, while the crisis had the same trigger worldwide – the pathogen SARS CoV 2 – its effects varied greatly depending on the local conditions in terms of health-care access and social security coverage. Along this line, high levels of informality in the labor market, scarce social protection, poor housing conditions, as well as reduced connectivity levels and low access to technology acted as catalysts for the crisis, making the preexisting social inequalities much more visible and creating new ones that sedimented onto the older ones. This project analyzed how the COVID-19 pandemic and its containment measures have affected different convivial spheres (family, community, labor market) and dynamics of production and reproduction of social inequalities in the three most important border cities of Paraguay: Asunción (the capital city), Ciudad del Este, and Encarnación. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, we have shown that the socioeconomic effects of the pandemic have not been homogeneous across the population. Self-employed and informal workers, women and those in the lower income percentiles have been particularly affected by income loss. Moreover, two years after the imposition of the containment measures, these groups are still far from a full recovery. At the household level, the gender gap in the distribution of domestic chores grew wider, especially in households with school-aged children and from lower social classes. And while the switch to homeschooling and virtual classes was a challenge for all, lower social classes experienced greater difficulties that will probably further deepen the education gap between those in public and private schools. In a context characterized by with high levels of inequality, elevated degrees of informality and lack of social security, Paraguayans have historically resorted to a series of community-based strategies to meet basic needs. But these practices can soon reach their limit, as the pandemic has shown. When borders closed, when schools switched to virtual classes and when many experienced reductions or loss of income, new strategies had to be developed. Responsibilities that were formerly assumed by the state or the market were transferred to families and communities, and within them, to women, exacerbating not only inequalities based on class, but also on gender and region. Our analysis has shown that the pandemic and its containment measures did not only produce and reproduce inequalities, but inequalities have also undermined the response to the crisis, creating a vicious cycle. And while inequalities are by no means a novelty in current societies, their exacerbation produces a rupture in the daily course of convivial relations, affecting how we live and interact with each other. Along this line, this project has contributed to the understanding of how the pandemic has re-configured the conviviality-inequality nexus and rearranged the distribution of responsibilities among the state, the market, families, and communities.
