Caring labour and domestic violence shelter work in the COVID-19 pandemic

Caring labour has long been a key part of the labour required of domestic violence shelter workers. Under the weight of public health directives during the COVID-19 pandemic, the nature and consequences of this caring labour changed. This paper examines these shifts within the broader context of the enduring invisibility of caring labour and the depoliticization of anti-violence work, both of which began long before the COVID-19 pandemic and has endured after. Drawing on 38 semi-structured interviews with shelter staff and residents working and living in domestic violence shelters in Ontario, Canada in 2022, we examine the pandemic-related shifts in shelter work and their wide-reaching consequences for workers, survivors, and anti-violence work.