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Zhe Yan

Fakultät Angewandte Wirtschaftswissenschaften (School of Management)

Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter:innen

Mitarbeiter

A 107

0991/3615-8363

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Zeitschriftenartikel

  • Zhe Yan
  • B. Luo

“It's your Liangxin that tells you what to do”: Interpreting workplace-induced emotions in a Chinese nursing home

In: Journal of Aging Studies vol. 64

  • (2023)

DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101111

How Direct Care Workers (DCWs) interpret their work and perform care activities undeniably impacts the well-being of institutionalized older adults. Despite the emotionally charged nature of paid care work, little is known about how Chinese DCWs talk about their work and construct meaning within China's unique social context of a burgeoning institutional care market and changing cultural expectations for long-term care. This study qualitatively explored Chinese DCWs' emotion work as they navigate among institutional pressures and low social recognition in an urban government-sponsored nursing home in central China. Results revealed that DCWs used Liangxin (the good heart/mind) – a ubiquitous Chinese moral notion emphasizing the unity of feeling, thought, and action – as an interpretive framework, including its four dimensions (ceyin, xiue, cirang, and shifei), to inform care practice, manage emotions, and find dignity within what can be personally demeaning and socially devalued work. Our study delineated the processes through which DCWs sympathized with the pain and struggles of the older adults in their care (ceyin xin), shamed unjust attitudes and behaviors embedded in institutional care (xiue xin), delivered family-like relational care (cirang xin), and formed and reinforced principles of good (versus bad) care (shifei xin). We also revealed the nuanced role that the cultural value of xiao (filial piety), working in tandem with liangxin, both shaped the emotional terrain of the institutional care setting and impacted how DCWs engaged in emotion work. While recognizing the effect of liangxin for incentivizing DCWs to provide relational care and renegotiate their role status, we were also alerted to the risks of overburdening and exploiting DCWs who relied solely on their liangxin to meet complex care needs.
  • Angewandte Wirtschaftswissenschaften
  • GESUND
Zeitschriftenartikel

  • Zhe Yan

"I tried to control my emotions": Nursing Home Care Workers' Experiences of Emotional Labor in China

In: Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology vol. 37 pg. 1-22.

  • 18.02.2022 (2022)

DOI: 10.1007/s10823-022-09452-4

Despite dramatic expansions in the Chinese nursing home sector in meeting the increasing care needs of a rapidly aging population, direct care work in China remains largely devalued and socially unrecognized. Consequently, scant attention has been given to the caregiving experiences of direct care workers (DCWs) in Chinese nursing homes. In particular, given the relational nature of care work, there is little knowledge as to how Chinese DCWs manage emotions and inner feelings through their emotional labor. This article examines the emotional labor of Chinese DCWs through ethnographic data collected with 20 DCWs in one nursing home located in an urban setting in central China. Data were analyzed using conventional content analysis and constant comparison. Participants' accounts of sustaining a caring self, preserving professional identity, and hoping for reciprocity revealed implicit meanings about the often-conflicting nature of emotional labor and the nonreciprocal elements of care work under constrained working conditions. Importantly, the moral-cultural notion of bao ( norm of reciprocity) was found to be central among DCWs in navigating strained resources and suggested their agency in meaning-construction. However, their constructed moral buffers may be insufficient if emotional labor continues to be made invisible by care organizations.
  • Angewandte Wirtschaftswissenschaften
  • GESUND
Beitrag in Sammelwerk/Tagungsband

  • Zhe Yan

Boundary Work in Marketized Chinese Nursing Home Care

pg. 1-18.

Singapore

  • (2022)

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-1914-4_43-1

  • Angewandte Wirtschaftswissenschaften
  • GESUND
Zeitschriftenartikel

  • Zhe Yan

An Ethical Glimpse into Nursing Home Care Work in China: Mei banfa

In: Ethics and Social Welfare vol. 14 pg. 417-424.

  • (2020)

DOI: 10.1080/17496535.2020.1839182

The ethical dimension of care work is less explored in Chinese long-term care (LTC) settings. This paper accentuates care ethics embodied by direct care workers (DCWs) from an ethnographic study of care at Sunlight Nursing Home in central China. I include the notion of xiao (filial piety) to construe care ethics by engaging both feminist and intersectional approaches. Empirical findings highlight the narrative of mei banfa (‘there is nothing you can do about it’) in revealing the complexity of caregiving in a commercialised environment where both physical and emotional care intertwine. Mei banfa compels DCWs to invoke their agency in care practice despite inadequate support from the nursing home and negative social portrayals of care work. It is a cognitive coping strategy of DCWs to harness their energy in upholding care ethics for both the elderly residents and their own family members. Such commitment is unlikely to be sustained if structural barriers continue to impede the recognition of care labour as part of social production. Arguably, an ethically informed approach to both policymaking and care practice gives voice to human interdependency in care work and affords ways to reimagine a caring future.
  • Angewandte Wirtschaftswissenschaften
  • GESUND