We situate the contemporary crisis of COVID-19 deaths in seniors’ care facilities within the restructuring and privatisation of this sector. Through an ethnographic comparison in a for-profit and nonprofit facility, we explore what we identify as brutal and soft modes of privatisation within publicly subsidised long-term seniors’ care in Vancouver, British Columbia, and their influence on the material and relational conditions of work and care. Workers in both places are explicit that they deliver only bare-bones care to seniors with increasingly complex care needs, and we document the distinct forms and extent to which these precarious workers give gifts of their time, labour and other resources to compensate for the gaps in care that result from state withdrawal and the extraction of profits within the sector. We nonetheless locate more humane and hopeful processes in the nonprofit facility, where a history of cooperative relations between workers, management and families suggest the possibility of re-valuing the essential work of care.

中文翻译：

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加拿大的老年人长期护理：软性到残酷私有化的连续统一体

我们将老年人护理设施中 COVID-19 死亡的当代危机置于该部门的重组和私有化中。通过在营利性和非营利性机构中进行人种学比较，我们探讨了在不列颠哥伦比亚省温哥华的公共补贴长期老年人护理中我们认为是残酷和温和的私有化模式，以及它们对物质和关系条件的影响工作和照顾。两地的工作人员都明确表示，他们只为护理需求日益复杂的老年人提供基本的护理服务，我们记录了这些不稳定的工作人员以不同的形式和程度奉献他们的时间、劳动力和其他资源以弥补差距由于国家退出和部门内利润提取而导致的护理。