ABSTRACT
The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted not only in the closing of national borders but also in the revival of symbolic borders informed by colonial, orientalist, and white supremacist legacies that have entrenched socioeconomic and racial inequalities, resulting in devastating impacts on migrant and refugee communities in the Global South and on racialized communities in the Global North. At the same time, racialized and migrant communities, and their allies, continue to struggle and reformulate strategies of survival and resistance. As social work educators and scholars situated in Quebec, Canada, the authors of this chapter aim to engage in critical dialogue and reflection about the ways in which COVID-19 has reorganized how they engage in social work research and education alongside oppressed communities and within their university and school of social work. The authors witnessed of the impacts of COVID-19 were shaped by forms of hypervulnerability that revived feelings of belonging and rejection to dominant and oppressed communities as well as silenced and intergenerational traumas. These dynamics were informed by historical colonial heritages that are often erased but then resurfaced in the form of colonial scars. As COVID-19 broke upon these colonial scars, the authors engage in critical dialogue about the ways in which their varied social locations and experiences shaped how they navigated complex "insider/outsider” dynamics. Through deep listening and giving account to oneself, a decolonial feminist approach in responding to COVID-19 crises is proposed. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.