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The Frontline as Performative Frame: An Analysis of the UK COVID Crisis
Abstract
In this paper, we examine the multiple significations of the “frontline” metaphor in the UK during the first ten months of COVID-19. We argue that the term “frontline” has operated as a performative frame, which has helped to produce the very notion and the materialization of the “COVID-19 frontline” and keyworkers. Showing how the UK government has repeatedly cited this metaphor, we outline the contradictory effects it has generated through an interplay of hyper-visibility and opaqueness. The frontline metaphor has been used to justify the government's injection of massive amounts of public money into the economy, render hyper-visible workers who had previously been invisible, whilst generating a sense of civic responsibility. Simultaneously, however, the metaphor has created a smokescreen for corrupt practices, deflecting attention away from resource-starved health and social care infrastructures and intensifying forms of “everyday bordering” and “everyday racism” that deepen structural injustices in the UK.
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https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-statement-on-coronavirus-17-march-2020 (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-23-march-2020 (italics added and accessed 14 February 2021).
The government definition of “keyworkers” shifted over the first ten months of the pandemic. For the current definition, see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-maintaining-educational-provision/guidance-for-schools-colleges-and-local-authorities-on-maintaining-educational-provision (accessed 14 February 2021).
See https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/front-line; and https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/16/frontline-is-it-misleading-to-apply-military-metaphors-to-medicine (accessed 14 February 2021).
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK government borrowing this year is likely to be the largest share of national income in peacetime, surpassing those seen at the height of the global financial crisis in 2009-10 when borrowing reached 10.2% of national income. See https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14845 (accessed 14 February 2021).
Rishi Sunak has been repeatedly described as the most popular Chancellor in decades. See e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/22/rishi-sunak-thrived-pandemic-popularity (accessed 14 February 2021).
See https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/2020/march/boe-measures-to-respond-to-the-economic-shock-from-covid-19 (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJhlo6DtJIk (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://www.europeansociologist.org/issue-45-pandemic-impossibilities-vol-1/political-economy-and-politics-%E2%80%93-covid-19-critical-political (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://www.bma.org.uk/media/2885/the-role-of-private-outsourcing-in-the-covid-19-response.pdf (accessed 14 February 2021).
See e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/17/world/europe/britain-covid-contracts.html (accessed 14 February 2021).
Drawing on Green and Ward (2004), we define state crime not only as more “overt agent-driven acts of state crimes such as genocide, torture and grand corruption” but rather as including neoliberal austerity measures that have caused mass suffering and countless deaths and, more generally, “human rights violations perpetuated by states through both over-reach and under-reach in structural terms” (Green and Ward 2004: 7).
See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-52664628 (accessed 14 February 2021)
See https://www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/keyworkers-july-2020-issue-british-vogue (accessed 14 February 2021).
Although beyond the scope of this paper, more and more research has underscored that the pandemic has profoundly exacerbated pre-existing gender inequalities. Women are being forced out of the labour market in higher numbers than men, whilst they are also bearing the brunt of home-schooling, as well as increased unpaid care and domestic work. Incidents of domestic violence have soared during lockdown. Moreover, for women whose immigration status is linked to that of their partner this significantly decreases the likelihood that they will leave an unsafe home. See e.g. https://voxeu.org/article/covid-19-and-gender-gaps-latest-evidence-and-lessons-uk; and https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2020/4/statement-ed-phumzile-violence-against-women-during-pandemic (accessed 14 February 2021).
See e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/6c7b59ad-be4f-46b3-8386-072f106a1960; https://www.ft.com/content/2b34269a-73f8-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca; and https://www.ft.com/content/d31e6627-1cc3-4f10-b96e-2b9e2670aaac (accessed 14 February 2021).
See e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52342511 and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52169648 (accessed 14 February 2021).
See https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/26/care-workers-should-be-better-paid-and-valued-after-covid-19-poll (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/consumer/articles-reports/2020/06/01/do-key-workers-feel-appreciated-work-during-covid- (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/sunak-told-not-to-grind-frontline-workers-down-after-a-decade-of-pay-austerity/23/11/ (accessed 14 February 2021).
See https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/29/20000-nhs-staff-return-to-service-johnson-says-from-coronavirus-isolation (accessed 14 February 2021).
See https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-10-may-2020 (emphasis added) (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-23-march-2020 (accessed 14 February 2021).
This kind of everyday bordering has affected many groups among the British population, and particularly individuals in the asylum system and migrants with precarious status (see Meier and Doná 2021). However, these practices have also affected long-term residents, most notably the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants who arrived in the UK between 1948 and 1973; see: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/27/home-office-windrush-report-damns-hostile-environment-policy (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/covid19-mutual-aid-solidarity/ (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://covidmutualaid.org/ (accessed 14 February 2021).
See e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-home-office-deportations-un-immigration-removals-a9560606.html (accessed 14 February 2021)
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exclusive-most-support-uk-citizenshipmigrant-frontline-workers/ (accessed 14 February 2021).
For grassroots campaigns against these charges, see http://www.docsnotcops.co.uk.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-points-based-immigration-system-employer-information/the-uks-points-based-immigration-system-an-introduction-for-employers (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://metro.co.uk/2020/10/16/doctor-paralysed-after-catching-covid-could-see-family-deported-while-still-in-icu-13431926/ (accessed 14 February 2021).
Of course, the intensification of everyday bordering and the xenophobic implications of Brexit are one aspect of the pandemic's racist inflections. Both frontline BAME workers and ethnic minorities more generally have also have died in disproportionate numbers during the pandemic, mostly due to unsafe working and housing conditions. See https://theconversation.com/49-more-likely-to-die-racial-inequalities-of-covid-19-laid-bare-in-study-of-east-london-hospitals-153834 (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.2020.305766 (accessed 14 February 2021).
See e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/27/healthcare-workers-heros-language-heroism; and https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/23/uk-key-workers-ppe-ministers-clapping-protect-nhs (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/21/nhs-doctor-enough-people-clapping?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1esIQL_G8ARU9nyHmFS9pYXwmKJ8ubmnX-HDY9lNkE_ AkV-Z7zj5BC6Yw (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/13/nhs-icu-staff-ptsd-severe-depression-anxiety (accessed 14 February 2021).
See https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/20/neil-greenberg-hospitals-must-give-staff-better-psychological-ppe-covid; and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55630157 (accessed 14 February 2021).
See https://www.nhsggc.org.uk/your-health/health-issues/covid-19-coronavirus/life-on-the-frontline/; https://www.berkshirehealthcare.nhs.uk/covid-19-coronavirus/life-on-the-front-line/nhs-staff-stories/; and https://www.kentcht.nhs.uk/2020/08/13/on-the-frontline-during-covid-19/ (accessed 14 February 2021).
https://www.england.nhs.uk/2020/04/student-docs-and-nurses-praised-for-joining-nhs-army-to-tackle-historic-coronavirus-threat/ (accessed 14 February 2021).
Studies on tracking apps found that mobility within cities fell much less during the second and third lockdown as compared to the first. This has raised concerns that people were no longer following the COVID-19 restrictions in the same way as they had been in March 2020.