Summary

This Co-Learning Plan examines how women workers and employers navigate the informal care and personal service sectors of the Detroit metropolitan region, focusing on immigrant and adjacent neighborhoods. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic-based economic crisis has impacted women with layoffs in service sector jobs or leaving to meet family care needs. Women engage the labor market informally through social networks and “brokerage institutions” including neighborhood institutions, e.g. temples, churches, and schools, to find work and household services. The research design employs mixed methodologies - archival data analysis and in-depth interviews - to map connective networks between formal and informal work that sustains a circular economy in greater Detroit.