Conceptualizing Mutual Aid in a Pandemic (and Beyond): Crisis Response or Ongoing Practice?

Overview: We explore how mutual aid, a longstanding practice among marginalized communities and communities in crisis, was conceptualized by those engaged in mutual aid in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We offer a spectrum of how participants conceptualized mutual aid and consider how conceptualizations intersect with participants’ social locations.Proposal text: In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began rapidly spreading across the U.S., surpassing 75 million cases and nearly 900,000 deaths by January 2022 (World Health Organization, 2022). The U.S. government has struggled to keep up with the ever-changing needs of the pandemic (Sharfstein & Marx, 2020). As a result, mutual aid proliferated as a way for communities to help one another meet basic needs.

For individuals and communities who experience marginalization, such as queer communities, communities of color, and chronically ill and disabled communities, mutual aid is often underscored by the political recognition that collective care is necessary for survival (Arani, 2021; Rio, 2020; Williams & Williams, 1984). Mutual aid has also emerged in crisis contexts, such as natural disasters (Wang, 2013). Mutual aid rapidly proliferated as a practice from the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as widespread needs prevailed, and the U.S. (and other) governments failed to keep up.

Recognizing the rapid increase in mutual aid efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, our study aimed to understand: how did mutual aid organizers and participants (many of whom were new to mutual aid at the time) conceptualize mutual aid in the early months of the pandemic? Considering the reality that mutual aid has historically been practiced within communities who endure marginalization, we consider how participants’ identities overlay with their conceptualizations of mutual aid.

This study relied on a critical phenomenological approach (Guenther, 2019) to understand how mutual aid participants and facilitators conceptualized mutual aid during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted by researchers with individuals engaging in mutual aid groups and intentional communities. Our sample (Nf25) included mutual aid (n=17) and intentional community (n=8) members that spanned a wide age range (26-70). Participants were most commonly straight (50%), white (80%), women (60%), and living in urbanized areas (72%).

We found that participants conceptualized mutual aid on a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, participants conceptualized mutual aid as a temporary crisis response, believing that the government should and would take care of us, and viewing mutual aid as similar to conventional aid practices. On the other end of the spectrum, participants understood mutual aid as an ongoing support practice, endorsing explicitly anti-government/anarchist ideals, and viewing mutual aid as explicitly different than traditional aid. All participants whose responses fell on the former side of the spectrum held privileged identities (white, cisgender, straight), suggesting that political education may be a necessity in future mutual aid work.

In sharing these findings at CSWE, we aim to invite presentation participants into discussion about mutual aid as a crisis response and/or an ongoing practice, especially as we consider how crises (such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, climate crises, and ongoing racial unrest) compound in our present society. Ultimately, we invite participants to consider: What do these varying conceptualizations of mutual aid mean for the future of social work education and the roles for which we prepare social work students?