IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/padxxx/v43y2023i3p232-244.html

“Nobody wants to be a dead hero”: Coping with precarity at the frontlines of the Brazilian and Mexican pandemic response

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriela Lotta
  • Fernando Nieto‐Morales
  • Rik Peeters

Abstract

This study analyzes how adverse working conditions shape frontline workers' behavioral and cognitive coping mechanisms. It builds on the idea of frontline work as a precarious profession and explores how workers deal with associated challenges. Specifically, evidence is provided for factors associated with alienative commitment among frontline workers. We do so against the background of the 2020–2021 Mexican and Brazilian pandemic response by health workers, social workers, and police officers. Findings from our qualitative analysis show that they feel abandoned, vulnerable, and left to deal with the risks of the pandemic by themselves. In response, they tend to cognitively disconnect from their work and prioritize their own job survival. We contribute to the literature by showing how institutional factors over which street‐level bureaucrats have little control, such as resource scarcity, lack of job security and managerial support, and low trust by citizen‐clients, are fertile conditions for these coping patterns.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriela Lotta & Fernando Nieto‐Morales & Rik Peeters, 2023. "“Nobody wants to be a dead hero”: Coping with precarity at the frontlines of the Brazilian and Mexican pandemic response," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(3), pages 232-244, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:padxxx:v:43:y:2023:i:3:p:232-244
    DOI: 10.1002/pad.2014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/pad.2014
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/pad.2014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter Hupe & Aurélien Buffat, 2014. "A Public Service Gap: Capturing contexts in a comparative approach of street-level bureaucracy," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 548-569, May.
    2. Walker, Liz & Gilson, Lucy, 2004. "'We are bitter but we are satisfied': nurses as street-level bureaucrats in South Africa," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(6), pages 1251-1261, September.
    3. Gabriela Lotta & Roberto Pires & Michael Hill & Marie Ostergaard Møller, 2022. "Recontextualizing street‐level bureaucracy in the developing world," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(1), pages 3-10, February.
    4. Niheer Dasandi & Marc Esteve, 2017. "The Politics–Bureaucracy Interface in Developing Countries," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(4), pages 231-245, October.
    5. Justesen, Mogens K. & Bjørnskov, Christian, 2014. "Exploiting the Poor: Bureaucratic Corruption and Poverty in Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 106-115.
    6. Nadine van Engen & Lars Tummers & Victor Bekkers & Bram Steijn, 2016. "Bringing History In: Policy accumulation and general policy alienation," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(7), pages 1085-1106, August.
    7. Julia Rosen, 2021. "Pandemic upheaval offers a huge natural experiment," Nature, Nature, vol. 596(7870), pages 149-151, August.
    8. Gibson, Diana, 2004. "The gaps in the gaze in South African hospitals," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(10), pages 2013-2024, November.
    9. Kelly, Gabrielle, 2017. "Patient agency and contested notions of disability in social assistance applications in South Africa," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 109-116.
    10. Ed Diener & Derrick Wirtz & William Tov & Chu Kim-Prieto & Dong-won Choi & Shigehiro Oishi & Robert Biswas-Diener, 2010. "New Well-being Measures: Short Scales to Assess Flourishing and Positive and Negative Feelings," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 97(2), pages 143-156, June.
    11. Oliver D. Meza & Carlos Moreno-Jaimes, 2020. "Taming the Beast: Managers’ Tactics to Change Frontline Workers’ Adversarial Interaction with Policy Targets," International Journal of Public Administration, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(10), pages 866-875, July.
    12. Guillermo M. Cejudo & Cynthia L. Michel, 2017. "Addressing fragmented government action: coordination, coherence, and integration," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 50(4), pages 745-767, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sergio A. Campos & Rik Peeters, 2022. "Policy improvisation: How frontline workers cope with public service gaps in developing countries—The case of Mexico's Prospera program," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(1), pages 22-32, February.
    2. Gabriela Lotta & Roberto Pires & Michael Hill & Marie Ostergaard Møller, 2022. "Recontextualizing street‐level bureaucracy in the developing world," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(1), pages 3-10, February.
    3. Shawar, Yusra Ribhi & Meraj, Shafkat & Koon, Adam D. & Shiffman, Jeremy, 2025. "Political factors shaping national systems of care for orphans and vulnerable children in low-income countries: Scoping review and framework," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    4. Shibaab Rahman & Prue Burns & Julie Wolfram Cox & Quamrul Alam, 2024. "Exercising bureaucratic discretion through selective bridging: A response to institutional complexity in Bangladesh," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(2), pages 61-74, May.
    5. Grigoriadis, Konstantinos, 2026. "From Pressures to Practice: A Dynamic Mediation Framework for Street-Level Bureaucracy," SocArXiv jb5dy_v1, Center for Open Science.
    6. Maw–Der Foo & Marilyn A. Uy & Charles Murnieks, 2015. "Beyond Affective Valence: Untangling Valence and Activation Influences on Opportunity Identification," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 39(2), pages 407-431, March.
    7. Yi-Ching Hsieh & Hung-Chang Chiu & Yun-Chia Tang & Wei-Yun Lin, 2018. "Does Raising Value Co-creation Increase All Customers’ Happiness?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(4), pages 1053-1067, November.
    8. Bashir Ahmad & Maria Ciupac-Ulici & Daniela-Georgeta Beju, 2021. "Economic and Non-Economic Variables Affecting Fraud in European Countries," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-17, June.
    9. Li, Tingting Elle & Chan, Eric Tak Hin, 2017. "Diaspora tourism and well-being: A eudaimonic view," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 205-206.
    10. Elmé Vivier & Diana Sanchez‐Betancourt, 2023. "Participatory governance and the capacity to engage: A systems lens," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(3), pages 220-231, August.
    11. M. Sirgy, 2011. "Theoretical Perspectives Guiding QOL Indicator Projects," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 103(1), pages 1-22, August.
    12. Merrick Powell & Kirk N. Olsen & William Forde Thompson, 2023. "Music, Pleasure, and Meaning: The Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motivations for Music (HEMM) Scale," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(6), pages 1-19, March.
    13. Zuoxian Gan & Tao Feng & Min Yang, 2018. "Exploring the Effects of Car Ownership and Commuting on Subjective Well-Being: A Nationwide Questionnaire Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-20, December.
    14. Nelli Ferenczi & Tara C Marshall, 2013. "Exploring Attachment to the “Homeland” and Its Association with Heritage Culture Identification," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(1), pages 1-17, January.
    15. repec:plo:pone00:0181616 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Yixuan Liu & Liumeng Li & Guomei Miao & Xinyan Yang & Yinghui Wu & Yanling Xu & Yonghong Gao & Yongzhi Zhan & Yiwei Zhong & Shujuan Yang, 2021. "Relationship between Children’s Intergenerational Emotional Support and Subjective Well-Being among Middle-Aged and Elderly People in China: The Mediation Role of the Sense of Social Fairness," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-12, December.
    17. Sakari Kainulainen, 2020. "Flourishing within the Working-Aged Finnish Population," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 15(1), pages 187-205, March.
    18. Sujit Raghunathrao Jagadale & Himadri Roy‐Chaudhuri & Djavlonbek Kadirov, 2021. "Quality‐of‐life as chronotopefication and futurization: Subsistence consumer experiences in India," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 59-86, March.
    19. Małgorzata Szczepaniak, 2024. "Examining the Determinants of Poland’s Middle Class Life Satisfaction," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 191-218, March.
    20. Mohammad Hossein Azin & Hessam Zandhessami, 2025. "Strategic Alignment Patterns in National AI Policies," Papers 2507.05400, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2025.
    21. Melberg, Andrea & Diallo, Abdoulaye Hama & Storeng, Katerini T. & Tylleskär, Thorkild & Moland, Karen Marie, 2018. "Policy, paperwork and ‘postographs’: Global indicators and maternity care documentation in rural Burkina Faso," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 28-35.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:padxxx:v:43:y:2023:i:3:p:232-244. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0271-2075 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.