COVID-19, Hyper Vulnerabilities, Silenced Traumas, and Colonial Scars: Social Work Scholars Engaging in Critical Dialogue with Racialized Communities

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.

Widening double dualisation? Labour market inequalities and national social policy responses in Western Europe during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Europe is witnessing a 'double dualisation' process, whereby inequalities have increased both between labour market insiders and outsiders, and between core and peripheral countries. We test the double dualisation hypothesis in the context of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Did the COVID crisis exacerbate income inequalities between insiders and outsiders? Did cross-country territorial divides also increase? Did national governments' emergency measures contribute to containing or widening double dualisation? We deploy a multi-method research design that combines original survey data on seven old EU member states with three case studies on Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Results show that, in the short term, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a catalyst of double dualisation: outsiders bore the greatest burden, especially in southern European countries. National emergency measures largely depended on the fiscal leeway available to governments and followed pre-existing welfare trajectories, thus worsening cross-country inequalities, with potentially severe consequences for the European integration process.

Towards Critical Analytical Auto-Ethnography: Global Pandemic and Migrant Women (Im)mobilities in Northern Ireland

This article discusses the usefulness of critical analytical auto-ethnography in studying migrant (im)mobilities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas the auto-ethnographic genre has boomed during COVID-19 times, the authors of auto-ethnographic texts usually focus on their own experiences of the pandemic, engaging in an evocative style of writing. Following an overview of autoethnographic writing genres, this article discusses complex issues of insider/outsider status in pandemic research. It calls for a critical and analytical auto-ethnographic approach to the study of migrations and mobilities in a context in which they are currently unevenly distributed.

Assessing vulnerability of informal floating workers in Bangladesh before and during COVID-19 pandemic: a multi-method analysis

Purpose>Globally, a myriad of floating workers is in grave jeopardy due to the ceasing of employment opportunities that resulted from the mobility restriction during the Covid-19. Despite the global concern, developing countries have been suffering disproportionately due to the dominance of informal workers in their labour market, posing the necessity to campaign for the immediate protection of this vulnerable population. This paper analyses various dimensions of the vulnerability of urban floating workers in the context of Covid-19 in Bangladesh. In reference to International Labour Organization's (ILO) “Decent Work” concept, this paper endeavours to examine floating workers' vulnerability using the insider-outsider framework in context to Covid-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approach>The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, data were collected before the pandemic to assess the vulnerability of the informal floating workers. Later, we extended the study to the second phase during the Covid-19 pandemic to understand how pandemic affects the lives and livelihood of floating workers. In phase one, data were collected from a sample of 342 floating workers and analysed based on job security, wages, working environment, psychological wellbeing and education to understand the vulnerability of floating workers. In phase two, 20 in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted, followed by thematic analysis to explore how the pandemic affects the existing vulnerability of floating workers.Findings>Various social protection schemes were analysed to evaluate their effectiveness in reducing the vulnerability of floating workers facing socio-economic crises. The study has found that the pandemic has multiplied the existing vulnerability of the floating workers on many fronts that include job losses, food crisis, shelter insecurity, education, social, physical and mental wellbeing. In response to the pandemic, the Government stimulus packages and Non-government Covid-19 initiatives lack the appropriate system, magnitude, and focus on protecting the floating workers in Bangladesh.Practical implications>This paper outlines various short-term interventions and long-term policy prescriptions to safeguard floating workers' lives and livelihood from the ongoing Corona pandemic and unforeseen uncertainties.Originality/value>This paper is the first of its kind that aims at understanding the vulnerability of this significant workforce in Bangladesh, taking the whole picture of Government and Non-government initiatives during Covid-19.

COVID and Camus: Reflections on The Plague, collective experience, and qualitative inquiry during a pandemic.

As a social worker and qualitative researcher, I read Albert Camus's The Plague as I lay recovering from COVID-19. The existential novella documents the experience of the citizens of Oran, Algeria during a fictional epidemic, and The Narrator's documentation is explicitly based on qualitative "data" from participant observation, key informant accounts, and document analysis. Camus's text forces the reader to reflect on what it means to qualitatively study an issue or an event when the researcher is also affected by it. Just as readers of The Plague must ponder the objectives and interpretation of The Narrator who is "closely involved in all that he proposed to narrate," qualitative researchers must contemplate their own assumptions, aims, and subjectivity, which is both foundational and often overlooked in qualitative inquiry. While this is particularly critical when studying shared or collective experiences, like that of a pandemic, these assumptions and aims should always be made transparent in qualitative research. To this end, I suggest a series of reflective questions for researchers to iteratively grapple with throughout the research process.