The Boundaries of Care: The Revelation of Invisible Social Labor in a Time of Crisis

Abstract

This article examines how professional roles in feminized public-sector occupations become sites for the absorption of expanded labor expectations during crisis conditions. We introduce the concept of invisible social labor – professionally embedded work serving broad societal functions while remaining unrecognized in formal job descriptions. Findings of a qualitative case study in an Israeli primary school in the context of COVID-19 lockdowns show that in feminized, low-status occupations such as teaching, workers are expected to perform invisible labor, not only to support the family and organization, but also to benefit society. We used a Foucauldian framework and drew on interviews, ethnographic observations, and analysis of media discourse, policy documents, and organizational correspondence to uncover the structural mechanisms through which national care work was discursively expanded and naturalized. We developed a power-informed model of the recursive production of invisible social labor to demonstrate how power operates across institutional, public, communal, and individual spheres through mechanisms of disciplinary control (surveillance, critique, managerial disregard) and subjectification (internalized moral imperatives, self-sacrifice). The study contributes to the literature on public-sector work boundaries by showing how feminized occupations facilitate the absorption of diffuse social demands into professional practice, blurring boundaries between maternal, organizational, and societal expectations.