Coping with Covid: the extra challenges faced by UK migrants

By Professor Benedetta Cappellini, November 2021

It's been a challenging time for everyone, but Professor Benedetta Cappellini's research uncovers the additional barriers that migrant communities encounter when dealing with coronavirus.

As Covid-19 secured its grip on the UK, our government and social bodies acted to put a number of schemes and measures in place to protect the public and support our day-to-day lives.

For companies struggling to operate under lockdown, the government introduced the furlough scheme, designed to enable employers to keep hold of their staff and pay them a fair wage whilst avoiding financial ruin.

For those reliant upon benefits with children to support, the government provided not only access to educational tools to help facilitate home schooling but also a boost to benefit payments and a continuation of free school meals. This would ensure that families could cope with the financial pressure of providing three nutritious meals a day.

And, of course, in an attempt to curb the rapid spread of the infection - particularly before vaccines became available - and to avoid near crippling pressure on our healthcare services, the government employed a variety of public safety interventions. These included communication campaigns through the media, healthcare support such as test and trace, enforced social distancing and both national and regional lockdowns.

That the elderly and medically vulnerable were at greatest risk of Covid-19 was well reported in the messaging put out by the government, health providers and the media. However, little to no focus was placed on other areas of society that might be feeling the strain more than others because of the pandemic: in particular, the UK's migrant population.

Globally, looking back at previous wide-scale health emergencies (such as SARS, Ebola or, more recently, Zika) it is always migrant communities that seem to be affected more than other sections of established society. A key reason for this is the cultural barriers that exist in society, which can often hinder access to healthcare and welfare support as well as limit social and often economic capital for migrant families. To understand the causes further, a research project I undertook, together with colleagues Dorothy Ai-wan Yen of Brunel Business School, Hsiao-Pei Yang of Coventry University and Suraksha Gupta of Newcastle University London, sought to uncover exactly why migrants living in the UK experienced additional mental strain and anxiety during the pandemic.

We discovered that whilst policymakers the world over commonly overlooked the challenges faced by international migrants in their host countries during the pandemic, the UK in particular was the subject of controversial global reviews and scrutiny due to the government's initial pandemic response and the high death toll.

To gain further insight, we conducted interviews with 60 migrants, of Chinese, Italian or Iranian nationality, living in the UK during the pandemic. These nationalities were selected for a vitally important reason - the high number of Covid-19 related deaths in their home countries at the time our study took place. Because of their high death rates, these countries had enforced stricter prevention measures within their borders before such restrictions came into place in the UK.

We asked the interviewees general questions about their personal background, profession, family and reasons for relocating to the UK to understand more about their lives, before asking more exploratory questions designed to gauge how well they were informed and understood the safety measures being enforced both in the UK and in their home country. We also asked questions about their experiences during lockdown - how well they had coped with confinement and the methods and routines they had employed to stay safe.

The results showed that, in a similar manner to UK nationals, migrants adapted their living and working habits during the lockdown in order to best comply with government guidance and to stay safe. However, in the early stages of the pandemic, many migrants reported experiencing unexpected and significant new worries that UK nationals did not. These worries were caused by the differences in virus protection and prevention methods employed by the UK in comparison with their home countries. Migrants experienced new sources of stress and anxiety if they chose to adopt any additional health and safety practices in line with the guidance distributed by their home countries that had not yet been advised or adopted by the UK Government.

A key example is mask wearing. Whilst commonplace in the UK now, in the early months of the pandemic and at the time of the fieldwork, the UK government was still advising the general public against the benefits of wearing face masks. However, our participants were often in favour of mask use, citing sources from their home countries that included newspaper articles and information received through friends and family overseas.

Some became actively involved in convincing their somewhat sceptical British colleagues and friends of the benefits of masks, in a bid to try and keep them safe. However, whilst migrants were eager to protect themselves from infection, many remained reluctant or wary about wearing a mask in public: thus, at best, they would not seem different from their UK friends and colleagues; and, at worse, they would avoid negative or hostile reactions from members of the public.

Nor were such concerns unfounded. Our interviews revealed that negative responses and reactions did indeed occur as a result of their adopting such practices, triggering additional emotional stress and anxiety. To avoid this, migrants developed separate household-based and community-based protective strategies and behaviours.

An additional source of strain came from closer to home. Families that encompassed multiple nationalities experienced further anxiety and conflict when migrants' families overseas implored their UK-based relatives to adopt more cautious behaviour, particularly when British members of the family chose not to do so.

A further key issue highlighted by our study concerned the ways and means by which safety messaging and instruction was shared with the UK public. The government's effectiveness to curb, contain or control the virus became significantly hindered by only publishing or promoting safety instructions in English and on English channels. As a result, its messaging failed to penetrate migrant communities where English was not a first language. Consequently, instructions were either not understood or missed entirely because these communities were not engaging with the British media or news channels. This meant that lockdown rules were not always followed as closely as they could have been, and vital support services were not fully taken up.

Alongside the need to cope with the pandemic, migrants also had to cope with the hostile reactions that their initial coping strategies provoked in those around them, on top of the additional challenge of trying to keep up with current government advice or navigate various support systems with little help or direction. Migrants essentially had to had to learn to cope with coping.

In discovering this anomaly, and the significant struggles faced by migrant communities in the face of such extreme circumstances, our study highlights a number of crucial points for governments and policymakers to consider in the event of not just further Covid-19 lockdowns but also future pandemics. In general, greater action should be taken to support migrant families and communities; in addition, more should be done to promote societal understanding and inclusion amongst the UK public so that people are less likely to feel wary of taking different - if unusual - precautions.

Simple actions, such as ensuring that official safety messaging is available in different languages or formats through a variety of media and seeded into communities at a local level, can help to ensure that everyone is acting in the safest possible manner and understands what support they may be entitled to. In a wider sense, international information exchange, collaboration and cohesion on safety measures could also prove to be an effective means of virus control and ensuring public safety.

With winter ahead and yet another possible rise in Covid cases to come, maintaining public safety for all has never been more important. We are all better versed in the dangers and stakes now, but we must continue to ensure that we protect ourselves and others.

More information on Professor Cappellini's research interests.