Irresponsible State Care and the Virality of Nail Salons: Asian American Women's Service Work, Vulnerability, and Mutuality

This article examines the discourse surrounding Asian American service workers through a focus on nail salon workers' efforts for advocacy and mutual aid. It is situated in a lens of Asian American and women of color feminisms and analyzes the necropolitical and biopolitical ways that essential workers and nonessential workers, in the various phases of reopenings, are differently valued and devalued as expendable for their service work and/or affective labor. It draws from state policy and media discourse in relation to the advocacy efforts of Asian American community-based or worker organizations.