Invisible work.

ObjectiveHow do persons with epilepsy (PWE) experience their everyday lives after epilepsy surgery? MethodsQualitative thematic interviews were conducted with eight PWEs (30 to 60 years old). They were recruited when coming for post-operative control 1 to 5 years after epilepsy surgery. The interviews were transcribed. They were analysed by thematic analysis and inspired by Goffman who examines everyday life activities as a theatre play. ResultsBefore surgery, a substantial invisible and hidden work of adjustments was performed to prevent seizures, to secure help from others if seizures occurred, and to protect oneself from others’ gaze during a seizure. This invisible work continued after surgery even for those who became seizure-free; but now for the purpose of protecting oneself from relapse of epilepsy. From the participants perspective there was no or minor change in daily activities among those not becoming seizure-free after surgery. In contrast, those who became seizure-free enjoyed the freedom to participate in social activities without planning or restrictions. ConclusionsA striking finding was that daily life after surgery comprises considerably invisible work to protect a social self, and this preventive and protective invisible work continued, although those who became seizure-free were living an ordinary socially healthy life.

This study elucidates dental hygienists' experiences of work with tobacco cessation among patients who smoke or use snuff. Data were obtained and categorized by interviewing 12 dental hygienists, who worked actively with tobacco cessation interventions. Qualitative content analysis was used for analysis. The latent content was formulated into the core category 'the invisible oral health promotion work'. The informants thought that they had a responsibility to work with tobacco cessation. They perceived the financial system in which they perform the activity as frustrating, because tobacco cessation has no treatment code in the dental care insurance. This was one of several reasons why they had to integrate it in other treatment procedures. The results identified three categories: 'balance in the meeting', 'possibilities and hindrance' and 'procedures'. In the narratives, both positive and negative aspects were displayed. The financial conditions for tobacco cessation interventions need to be reformed and the activity has to be given a higher priority in the organization of dental care. Practical training in performing tobacco cessation interventions is important during the dental hygiene education; otherwise, tobacco cessation interventions will remain invisible in oral health promotion in the future.

Although it is broadly acknowledged that democratic politics should operate through the public competition of binding positions, the careful development of these positions is commonly neglected. Providing ethnographic analysis of the work of staff advisers in parliamentary groups, the paper explores the invisible work invested into these competing positions. We argue that the invisibilization of work serves to accomplish a central tenet of democratic political discourse: the demonstration of resonance between constituents and elected politicians. The latter may be assisted by - but must not depend on - non-elected staff. Against this 'sacred' premise of representative democracy, the paper shows that and how political positions are based on invisible work and the work of invisibilizing. Building on laboratory and workplace studies, we specify the shape and function of invisibility by contrasting studies on invisible work in the natural sciences, in case law, and in party politics. In these instances, invisible work serves different discursive objects-in-formation: scientific facts, legal cases, and binding positions. Understanding invisible work, thus, leads us to consider different constitutive relevancies. In turn, these serve to specify established concepts in STS, such as 'controversy,' to better distinguish the day-to-day conduct of natural science from that of politics or law.

This article investigates invisible work, as voiced by professionals in the interpreting sector in the UK. Informed by a practice theory approach alongside the sociology of invisible work, it re-frames invisibility as enacted according to the elements that organise and motivate work in terms of purposeful, normative and skilful actions. Drawing on a qualitative dataset of 20 observations and 46 interviews with interpreters, the article conceives invisibility as a functional labour logic in which compliance and resistance to being unseen are the twofold cornerstone of professionalism but also of devaluation. As a freelance workforce, interpreters face contradictions between deontological and stakeholders’ expectations of invisibility, and the individual need of displaying an expert role for securing work continuity. This article contributes to social practice and invisible work literature by uncovering the performative interrelation of the work dynamics which demand a negotiation of hidden/visible status.

This case study is a teacher’s reflection of invisible work when I initiated an instructional technology project that aimed to close digital inequality in a remote elementary school in Taiwan. 13 One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptops were deployed to 2nd and 5th grade children and I taught their science classes during June 2011 to January 2012. My field reflections revealed that invisible work was necessary in order to sustain, protect, and expand students’ opportunity to use their XO laptops in the school. In conclusion, public awareness about teachers’ invisible work is critical and should be studied, reported, and recognized by the field of educational research.

Making an Impact: Cultural Studies, Media and Contemporary Work

There is broad consensus amongst researchers and international organisations that the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC), which means the wellbeing of children and families, depends on well‐educated and competent staff. This remains a challenge in Europe, since part of the workforce is also represented by low‐qualified ECEC assistants in many EU countries. In the CoRe study (2011), assistants are defined as ‘invisible workers’, meaning that their presence is usually not taken into account in policy documents and that they have far fewer possibilities of qualification and professional development than core practitioners. Building on the findings of the CoRe study, a recent NESET II report reviewed the profiles of ECEC assistants in 15 European countries and their professionalisation opportunities. This article describes the report's findings, with a focus on the roles of assistants and on how to create coherent pathways towards their qualification and continuous professional development (CPD) opportunities. The latter is shown through the examples of three case studies carried out in Denmark, France and Slovenia. Recommendations for policy makers are included in the conclusions. The framework of the article is the ‘competent system’: as pointed out in the CoRe study, individual competences alone are not sufficient to create quality. A ‘competent system’ is needed which includes collaboration between individuals, teams and institutions and has competent governance at policy level. This means working within a holistic ‘educare’ approach that is able to value the educative role of caring and the caring role of education.

Post-surgery care involves ongoing collaboration between provider teams and patients, which starts from post-surgery hospitalization through home recovery after discharge. While prior HCI research has primarily examined patients' challenges at home, less is known about how provider teams coordinate discharge preparation and care handoffs, and how breakdowns in communication and care pathways may affect patient recovery. To investigate this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 healthcare providers and 4 patients in the context of gastrointestinal (GI) surgery. We found coordination boundaries between in- and out-patient teams, coupled with complex organizational structures within teams, impeded the "invisible work" of preparing patients' home care plans and triaging patient information. For patients, these breakdowns resulted in inadequate preparation for home transition and fragmented self-collected data, both of which undermine timely clinical decision-making. Based on these findings, we outline design opportunities to formalize task ownership and handoffs, contextualize co-temporal signals, and align care plans with home resources.

The high degree of digitalization in Scandinavian countries has led to challenges for those who find themselves digitally excluded, facing several barriers to participation in society. Many may receive help from “warm experts”, i.e. family members or friends, but that is not possible for all. Different groups of frontline government workers may also act as helpers, even if they do not have assistance with digital public services as a core part of their remit. In Norway, health personnel often care for citizens in their home settings and may frequently be asked to help with digital challenges. This study aims to explore the nature of the work that nurses do in helping citizens with digital challenges, and challenges that they face in doing this. This explorative study is based on a survey of 3.044 nurses working in the Norwegian municipal sector. The survey constitutes a combination of a qualitative (open ended questions) and quantitative approach (closed questions), The open-ended questions were thematically analyzed and the close questions were used for descriptive statistics. The findings show that nurses do considerable invisible work in helping patients with digital technology. They frequently help with both basic hardware and software challenges, as well as with specific services, some of which are related to health. Many do this driven by their professional ethos, believing this is vital to patients´ well-being. This takes time from other (core) tasks. They often worry about the help they provide and find themselves in a grey zone exacerbated by a lack of guidelines and support from peers and colleagues. The paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the invisible work nurses do due to digitalization of public services, and why they do this. Furthermore, the paper highlights the grey zone which many nurses must navigate, and the challenges they encounter. Although our findings are from a specific context, they may also apply to nurses and healthcare workers in other countries with high degrees of digitalization, and to some extent to other groups of frontline workers. Implications include better digital training but also more concrete guidelines for nurses on what to do when asked for digital help.

This article presents the identification process of competencies and invisible work in one of the two hospital areas where has been undertaken the fieldwork of a research focussed on the changes taking place on work process and on the competencies and skills exercised in the productive performance. Firstly it is presented a theoretical introduction on the concepts of competencies and invisible work . The second part is concerned with the methodological strategy used to its empirical identification. Finally, the conclusions of the research related to both concepts are presented and the links between each other in the area that has been studied are shown.

Feminist scholars and activists have long fought to make visible the fundamental but overlooked social reproduction work performed primarily by women, often in households. Taking on black feminist criticisms of the initial prioritization of the experience of white, middle-class women, these debates have developed into a broader social reproduction theory, which emphasizes the relationality of multiple forms of oppression under capitalism. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its lockdowns, temporarily turned the traditional distribution between visible and invisible work on its head when many so-called productive workers were ushered into their homes, leaving only the most essential workers publicly visible in the streets and valorized in online spaces. The sudden visibility of these generally low-paid, often racialized and marginalized workers now coded as ‘essential’ highlighted the importance of the work of social reproduction. However, the category of essential workers was ambivalent, in that by making visible some forms of social reproduction it continued to obscure others, especially familial care work and housework. In this article we analyse the ambivalent category of the essential worker and argue that it exemplifies, as social reproduction theory attests, that the capitalist production process always requires invisible labour, even as some previously invisible forms become increasingly visible.

Medical schools are important nodes in the reproduction of medical knowledge, and an often-visited field site for medical anthropologists. To date, the spotlight has been on teachers, students and (simulated) patients. I broaden this focus to look at the practices of medical school secretaries, porters and other staff, investigating the embodied effects of their “invisible work.” Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in a Dutch medical school, I mobilize the more multisensory term “shadow work” to understand how such practices become part of medical students’ future clinical practices through highlighting, isolating, and exaggerating, necessary elements of their medical education.

Scarce healthcare resources and a growing older population are pushing forward a need to transform elderly care arrangements into becoming more technology-enabled in the private homes. This paper present findings from an action research study where the participants tested telecare as a service for remote delivery of selected homecare services. The telecare solution was applied either by the participants’ own television or using a modern tablet. However, several user barriers were experienced when the participants tested telecare in their everyday life. Thus, the telecare solution was rejected after end of pilot study. We found that the technical telecare solution was not enough supportive, especially during the days when the participants for various reasons not were able to perform the necessary preparation, the “invisible work” or behind the scene work ahead of the consultation. In previous research literature, the notion of the invisible work has mostly been used as theoretical lenses understanding formal care work. The move of assistive technologies into the home of the elderly people create a need to re-shape partakers in the elderly care work – whereas elderly care receivers also are active involved in the care arrangements. Moreover, the technology platform used for supporting elderly people should be design in a way that both support them in the visible work (the actual task the technology is set to support) and the invisible work (all the extra work to make it work) if we aim to better succeed in transforming pilot studies into sustainable care services.

Studies demonstrate that the convergence of neoliberalism and New Public Management imperatives creates conditions wherein social service providers undertake various types of unpaid work, reemphasizing the role of gender in service provision. Drawing on these arguments, this study explores the process through which unpaid practices restructure gender in social service organizations, using the concept of “invisible work.” Applying the institutional ethnography method of inquiry, we examine experiences of social service workers in the Israeli public sector and operationalize unpaid work as informal personal resources that workers provide to clients. Analysis of 185 in‐depth interviews revealed three main discursive frames workers use to justify provision of personal resources. Through these frames, informal practices become invisible as work in multiple layers—to the self, the organization, and the society. Similar to invisible work in the household, its invisibility in the workplace constitutes a main force in the reproduction of gendered social service organizations.

Invisible Workers