Department of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074, Würzburg, Germany.
J Cross Cult Gerontol. 2022 Mar;37(1):1-22. doi: 10.1007/s10823-022-09452-4. Epub 2022 Feb 18.
Despite dramatic expansions in the Chinese nursing home sector in meeting the increasing care needs of a rapidly aging population, direct care work in China remains largely devalued and socially unrecognized. Consequently, scant attention has been given to the caregiving experiences of direct care workers (DCWs) in Chinese nursing homes. In particular, given the relational nature of care work, there is little knowledge as to how Chinese DCWs manage emotions and inner feelings through their emotional labor. This article examines the emotional labor of Chinese DCWs through ethnographic data collected with 20 DCWs in one nursing home located in an urban setting in central China. Data were analyzed using conventional content analysis and constant comparison. Participants' accounts of sustaining a caring self, preserving professional identity, and hoping for reciprocity revealed implicit meanings about the often-conflicting nature of emotional labor and the nonreciprocal elements of care work under constrained working conditions. Importantly, the moral-cultural notion of bao ( norm of reciprocity) was found to be central among DCWs in navigating strained resources and suggested their agency in meaning-construction. However, their constructed moral buffers may be insufficient if emotional labor continues to be made invisible by care organizations.
尽管中国养老院部门在满足快速老龄化人口日益增长的护理需求方面大幅扩张，但中国的直接护理工作仍然在很大程度上被低估和社会所忽视。因此，人们很少关注中国养老院直接护理工作者（DCWs）的护理体验。特别是，鉴于护理工作的关系性质，对于中国 DCWs 如何通过情感劳动来管理情绪和内心感受，几乎没有什么了解。本文通过对中国中部一个城市养老院的 20 名 DCWs 进行的民族志数据，考察了中国 DCWs 的情感劳动。使用常规内容分析和恒定比较对数据进行了分析。参与者对维持关怀自我、保护专业身份和希望得到回报的叙述揭示了情感劳动的本质以及在资源有限的工作条件下非互惠性的护理工作之间经常存在冲突的隐含意义。重要的是，在应对紧张的资源时，“bao”（互惠规范）这一道德文化观念被发现是 DCWs 之间的核心概念，并表明了他们在意义构建方面的能动性。然而，如果护理组织继续使情感劳动变得不可见，那么他们构建的道德缓冲区可能是不够的。
