Micro-Entrepreneurs’ Health Strategies During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic
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Romana Marková Volejníčková
,
Hana Maříková
,
Marie Pospíšilová
and
Markéta Švarcová
Abstract
The topic of safeguarding against sickness grew in importance during the COVID-19 pandemic. People’s health was more at risk, yet not all had the same capacity and options to deal with it. Therefore, this article focuses on the under-researched topic of choice of strategies and individual practices for safeguarding against one’s sickness among micro-entrepreneurs (with 1–10 employees) before and during the pandemic, namely on the example of Czechia. We analyse 30 qualitative interviews with micro-entrepreneurs to demonstrate how their social location affects the attainability of strategies and individual practices for that purpose. It is primarily their family role (breadwinner vs caregiver) that, along with socioeconomic status, either limits or opens choices of strategies and individual practices or combinations thereof. Although the COVID-19 pandemic posed a high health risk to the entire society, it did not bring the micro-entrepreneurs to revise their often-risky choices in safeguarding against sickness. In contrast, it highlighted some specifics of micro-enterprises, e.g. their unclear organisational structure, which proved a high risk in the context of the health crisis.
Funding source: This article is co-financed from the state budget by the Technology agency of the Czech Republic under the Éta Progamme
Award Identifier / Grant number: TL03000670
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Funding: This article is co-financed from the state budget by the Technology agency of the Czech Republic under the Éta Progamme under grant TL03000670.
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Declaration: All individuals listed as authors qualify as authors and have approved the submitted version. Their work is original and is not under consideration by any other journal. They have permission to reproduce any previously published material.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Monogamy as a Force of Social Progress and Women’s Empowerment
- “Sacred and Beautiful”: The Lived Experience of Slovak Women who had a Planned Homebirth
- The Effect of Social Capital on Perceived Stress: A Comparative Analysis of Employed and Non-Employed Women of Bangladesh
- Micro-Entrepreneurs’ Health Strategies During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Body Integrity Dysphoria and “Just” Amputation: State-of-the-Art and Beyond
- Creative and Research Segments of European Humanism: Development of a Single Cultural Space
- “Struggle for Peace, in their Own Land” as the Philosophy of the “Nevada-Semipalatinsk” Movement
- Unleashing the Beast: Exploring Incivility and Intolerance in Facebook Comments Under Populist and Non-populist Politicians’ Social Media Posts About Migration
- Audience Democracy 2.0: Re-Depersonalizing Politics in the Digital Age
- Towards the Digital Risk Society: A Review
- Book Review
- Kasanda, A. and Hrubec, M.: Africa in a Multilateral World. Afropolitan Dilemmas
