Temporary Residents, Lasting Issues: International Graduate Students and Covid-19

La pandémie de Covid-19 a rendu les résidents temporaires au Canada particulièrement vulnérables, car leur statut juridique précaire, les obstacles à l'accès aux soins de santé, l'insécurité financière et professionnelle, l'impossibilité de voyager et l'isolement social se sont intensifiés. Les étudiants internationaux étaient parmi ceux qui devaient relever ces défis tout en étant rendus invisibles en raison de leur statut inconstant d'étudiants et de résidents temporaires. Nos recherches auprès d'étudiants étrangers diplômés et de leurs familles montrent que, même avant la pandémie, cette population était confrontée à des problèmes d'insécurité financière, d'équilibre entre vie professionnelle et vie privée, d'isolement social et de restrictions de voyage, problèmes aggravés par l'entrecroisement de la race et du genre, et exacerbés par la Covid-19. Étant donné que la pandémie de Covid-19 a amplifié les inégalités sous-jacentes au Canada au niveau systémique, avec plus de personnes racialisées atteints de Covid-19 et qui en meurent, et plus de personnes racialisées avec un statut légal précaire qui perdent leur gagnepain, nous pouvons postuler que les étudiants internationaux ne font pas exception. Les mesures adoptées par le gouvernement canadien, telles que la prestation d'urgence pour les étudiants canadiens, excluent les étudiants internationaux, qui contribuent à l'économie canadienne à hauteur de plus de 20 milliards de dollars par an et sont une source de revenus pour les universités et les collèges canadiens. Dans cet article, nous examinons comment la pandémie de Covid-19 a affecté les étudiants internationaux diplômés et leur vie familiale dans une ville de l'Alberta et quel impact les politiques gouvernementales ont eu sur leur vie. Basé sur 20 entretiens approfondis avec des étudiants étrangers diplômés et leurs conjoints, cet article met en évidence la disparité de soutien entre les étudiants étrangers et les citoyens canadiens pendant la pandémie, y compris le soutien financier, l'assistance institutionnelle, l'isolement et les interactions transnationales. Nous explorons également la manière dont les hypothèses institutionnelles et les politiques gouvernementales durant la pandémie sapent l'expérience sexiste et racialisée des étudiants étrangers diplômés avec leur famille immédiate et transnationale. Nous proposons à travers notre analyse que le traitement des étudiants internationaux pendant la pandémie devrait être une préoccupation de justice académique étant donné le statut vulnérable, précaire et relativement invisible de cette population, souligné en outre par les discriminations intersectionnelles vécues par de nombreux étudiants qui cherchent à trouver un avenir au Canada.Alternate :The Covid-19 pandemic made temporary residents in Canada particularly vulnerable, as their precarious legal status, barriers in accessing healthcare, financial and job insecurity, the impossibility of travel, and social isolation intensified. International students were among those who had to navigate these challenges while being made invisible due to their liminal status of being students and temporary residents. Our research with international graduate students and their families shows that even in pre-pandemic times, this population was battling financial insecurities, issues of worklife balance, social isolation, and travel restrictions;issues compounded at the intersections of race and gender and exacerbated by Covid-19. Given that the Covid-19 pandemic has amplified underlying inequities in Canada at the systemic level, with more racialized people being infected with Covid-19 and dying from it, and more racialized people with precarious legal status losing their livelihood, we can assume that international students are no exception. Measures adopted by the Canadian government, such as the Canada Student Emergency Benefit, excluded international students, who contribute over 20 billion dollars annuall to the Canadian economy and are a source of revenue for Canadian universities and colleges. In this paper, we explore how the Covid-19 pandemic affected international graduate students and their familial lives in a city in Alberta and what impact government policies had on their lives. Based on 20 in-depth interviews with international graduate students and their spouses, this paper highlights the disparity in support between international students and Canadian citizens during the pandemic, including financial support, institutional assistance, isolation, and transnational interactions. We also explore how institutional assumptions and governmental policies during the pandemic undermine the gendered and racialized experience of international graduate students with their immediate and transnational families. We contend through our analysis that the treatment of international students during the pandemic should be a concern of academic justice given the vulnerable, precarious, and relatively invisible status of this population, underscored further by the intersectional discriminations experienced by many students who are looking to find a future in Canada.

Deep care: The COVID‐19 pandemic and the work of marginal feminist organizing in India

In this paper, we adopt a Southern feminist epistemology to critically appraise the ways in which media discourse on gendered organizing during the Indian COVID‐19‐induced migrant crisis resists or reinforces hegemonic caste hierarchies. To contextualize this work, we briefly historicize scholarship on feminist organizing around land rights, hunger, and violence, while noting the politics of contagion and pollution narratives plaguing the pandemic discourse in India. After conducting a qualitative content analysis (QCA) followed by a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of media discourses across three tiers (international, national, and local), we found that international and national tiers of discourse largely deployed a savarna gaze that worked to 1) Reinforce brahminical and technocratic pandemic narratives and 2) Delegitimize Dalit marginal organizing feminist work and Dalit sensibilities through seven overlapping metrics of erasure. On the other hand, local tier of discourse confronted the savarna gaze, amplified voices of Dalit and Muslim women by centering their narratives of resistance, and tackled the exacerbation of casteist oppression under the pandemic in the service of emancipation. Local discourses also highlight how marginal organizing during the first pandemic lockdown involved provision of essential resources and services (food, medical care, security) for mostly Dalit and Muslim migrant workers, and women intersectionally facing domestic violence and savarna violence. Despite the brahmininal structural oppression, Dalit feminist praxis' emblematic resistance of oppressive structures, during and beyond times of crisis, constitutes what we call the work of deep care.

Towards a Theory of Elsewhere

At the same time, the universal sense of transnational community of Muslims or I ummah i South Asian Muslims felt because of a connectedness to the Middle East version of Islam, brought them together in a unified "ummatic" (p. 49) identity. Tahseen Sham's, I Here, There and Elsewhere: The making of immigrant identities in a globalized world i offers an incisive and detailed analysis of the identity-making process among South Asian Muslim immigrants in the United States. Empirically, Shams posits South Asian Muslim immigrants as a distinctive group that affords the possibilities of theorizing how histories of homeland, religion, and globalization intersect to forge immigrant identities in the hostland. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Sociological Forum is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)