Hailing in the Face of Covid-19: On the Uses and Abuses of Heroism

In this paper, we examine the paradoxes of hailing health care workers as “Covid-19 heroes” in Canada and the United Kingdom. We ask how public discourses – primarily by governments, politicians, mainstream media, but also by racially minoritized groups and migrant-led associations – frame the ambiguous social and legal status of mostly women of colour “essential” health care workers during the pandemic. We argue that hailing is a form of conditional inclusion which involves both the camouflaging of individuals’ low-class status, precarious position in the workplace, gendered and racially minoritized positionality and insecure/non-permanent immigration status on the one hand, as well as the potential for resistance, emancipation, wider organizing, and claims-making. Through a focus on Filipino/a workers because of their high levels of representation as health care staff in both contexts, our empirical analysis underlines that hailing as conditional inclusion is asymmetrical and unequal. It enables co-optation and deflection from structural inequalities as the price of conditional inclusion of selected individuals and groups. However, at the same time, hailing generates resistance. Through “tiny openings” these contradictions are named, and the binary language of inclusion/exclusion is challenged.