Molenaar Jil, Van Praag Lore
Centre for Migration and Intercultural Studies (CeMIS), University of Antwerp, Stadscampus, S.LN55.202, Lange Nieuwstraat 55, B-2000, Antwerp, Belgium.
SSM Qual Res Health. 2022 Dec;2:100076. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmqr.2022.100076. Epub 2022 Apr 29.
The COVID-19 pandemic affects different people unequally, and migrants are frequently among the groups considered particularly vulnerable. However, conceptualizations of 'vulnerability' are often ambiguous and poorly defined. Using critical discourse analysis methods, this article analyses the academic use of the term 'vulnerable' applied to migrants in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic across public health and social science disciplines. Our findings indicate that the concept of vulnerability is frequently applied to migrants in the COVID-19 context as a descriptor with seemingly taken-for-granted applicability. Migrants are considered vulnerable for a wide variety of reasons, most commonly relating to exposure to and risk of contracting COVID-19; poverty or low socio-economic status; precarity; access to healthcare; discrimination; and language barriers. Drivers of migrants' vulnerability were frequently construed as immutable societal characteristics. Additionally, our analysis revealed widespread generalization in the use of the notion of vulnerability, with limited consideration of the heterogeneity among and between diverse groups of migrants. Conceptualizations of migrants' vulnerability in the COVID-19 pandemic were sometimes used to advance seemingly contradictory policy implications or conclusions, and migrants' own views and lived experiences were often marginalized or excluded within these discourses. Our analysis highlights that although some definable groups of people are certainly more likely to suffer harm in crisis situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of 'vulnerable' as a fixed descriptor has potentially negative implications. As an alternative, we suggest thinking about vulnerability as the dynamic outcome of a process of 'vulnerabilisation' shaped by social order and power relations.
新冠疫情对不同人群的影响并不均衡，移民往往是被认为特别脆弱的群体之一。然而，“脆弱性”的概念通常含混不清且定义不佳。本文运用批判性话语分析方法，分析了公共卫生和社会科学学科领域中，“脆弱”一词在新冠疫情背景下用于描述移民的学术用法。我们的研究结果表明，在新冠疫情背景下，脆弱性概念经常被用作描述移民的术语，其适用性似乎是理所当然的。移民被认为脆弱有多种原因，最常见的是与接触新冠病毒和感染风险、贫困或社会经济地位低下、不稳定、获得医疗保健服务、歧视以及语言障碍有关。移民脆弱性的驱动因素常常被视为不可改变的社会特征。此外，我们的分析还揭示了在使用脆弱性概念时存在广泛的一概而论现象，对不同移民群体之间的异质性考虑有限。在新冠疫情中对移民脆弱性的概念化有时被用来推进看似相互矛盾的政策含义或结论，而在这些论述中移民自身的观点和生活经历往往被边缘化或排除在外。我们的分析强调，尽管在新冠疫情这样的危机情况下，某些可明确界定的人群肯定更有可能遭受伤害，但将“脆弱”用作固定描述词可能会产生负面影响。作为一种替代方案，我们建议将脆弱性视为由社会秩序和权力关系塑造的“脆弱化”过程的动态结果。
