Publications

The unspeakable cruelty of El Salvador’s abortion laws. The Conversation. April 11, 2018.​

“Patriarchy, new left post-neoliberalism, and the valuing of care work: the labor conditions of Nicaraguan nurses under Sandinismo's 'second stage.'" Latin America Research Review 53(4). Forthcoming in Summer 2018.
This paper examines how the labor conditions of nurses in Nicaragua have evolved through twenty-five years of health-care policy and regime transition, with the major focus on the period since the Frente Sandinista de la Liberación Nacional (FSLN)’s return to power in 2007. Of interest are the sorts of deteriorations in nurses' work-related well-being that were imposed by neoliberal health-care restructuring and whether these have been redressed by the FSLN. Upon presenting findings from interviews and focus groups with over 50 nurses showing no improvement in their situation, I connect this to long-standing patterns in the gendering of care work, as well as the Sandinista track record in exploiting these patterns. Also of relevance is the FSLN’s mutual antagonism with feminist movements and its incremental but pronounced turn toward a regressive stance on gender equality. Finally, a steady drift toward authoritarianism by the FSLN government constrains the capacity for nurses to collectively assert their interests as workers and professionals. 

“Nurses’ Labor Conditions, Gender, and the Value of Care Work in Post-Neoliberal El Salvador.” Critical Sociology. November 2016
Neoliberal cut-backs in health-care spending have had numerous negative impacts on nurses, but we know less about how they fare when governments move from neoliberal austerity to reinvestment in their health-care systems. El Salvador is an apt case to examine for how a post-neoliberal health-care reform, launched in 2010 by the newly elected FMLN government, addresses the deterioration in nurses’ work conditions caused by austerity policies. Based mainly on focus groups, interviews and participant observation conducted in the first three years of the reform’s implementation, the analysis finds important strides for nurses, especially in increased hiring in the expanded components of public health-care, and the reduction of labor precarity in formal employment. But several problems continue to imperil nurses’ well-being, reflecting, in part, a persistent devaluation of the care work that is performed mainly by women

“Obstacles to Nurses’ Labour Militancy in Central America: Toward a Framework for 
Cross-National Comparison of Nurses’ Collective Action.” Labor Studies Journal. October 31, 2017
This paper seeks to understand the low level of nurses’ labor militancy in El Salvador and Nicaragua compared with many other countries. Key to the analysis is the concept of oppositional consciousness, which was developed for the study of how oppressed groups convert anger over unjust treatment into vocal and even disruptive demands for change. I use data collected through interviews and focus groups to argue that while nurses in El Salvador and Nicaragua face many of the same hindrances to militancy seen elsewhere, they are more exposed to cultural and institutional forces that discourage a contestational stance. Chief among these are the influence of religion in nurses’ schooling and socialization, and nurses’ lack of experience with unions specific to their occupation. The latter owes, in turn, to particular historical and political factors in each country.

What Nurses Do: A Glimpse of Their Work in El Salvador’s Public Health Care System
This e-book reflects my attempt to understand, document and relay, through narrative and visual information, what nurses’ responsibilities and skills consist of, and what difference they make to the health of Salvadoreans. In trying to make nurses’ contributions to health-care more visible to the general public in Central America, Canada, and elsewhere, my hope is to illuminate how they are affected by limitations of both physical and human resources in the public system, and also how they make due with these constraints.

This e-book is available in Spanish, too. You can download the pdf e-book using the below link:

What Nurses Do: A Glimpse of Their Work in El Salvador’s Public Health Care System